m  re 


GIFT   Of 
of      1307 


THE  WHITE  MORNING 


BY  MRS.  ATHERTON 

HISTORICAL 
THE  CONQUEROR 
CALIFORNIA:    An  Intimate  History 
WAR  BOOK 
THE  LIVING  PRESENT 

FICTION 
CALIFORNIA 

BEFORE    THE    GRINGO     CAME,    Containing    "Rezdnov" 
(1806)   and  "7  he  Doomswoman"   (1840) 

THE  SPLENDID  IDLE  FORTIES   (1800-46) 
A  DAUGHTER  OF  THE  VINE  (The  Sixties) 

AMERICAN   WIVES  AND   ENGLISH  HUSBANDS   (The 
Eighties) 

THE  CALIFORNIANS  (The  Eighties) 

A   WHIRL  ASUNDER  (The  Nineties) 

ANCESTORS  (Present) 

THE   VALIANT  RUNAWAYS:    A   Book   for  Boys   (1840) 

IN  OTHER  PARTS  OF  THE  WORLD 
THE   WHITE  MORNING 

MRS.  B  ALFA  ME 

PERCH  OF  THE  DEVIL  (Montana) 

TOWER  OF  IVORY  (Munich) 

JULIA  FRANCE  AND  HER  TIMES   (B.   W.  1.  and  Eng 
land) 

RULERS   OF   KINGS    (Austria,   Hungary   and    the   Adiron- 
dacks) 

THE  TRAVELLING  THIRDS  (Spain) 
THE  GORGEOUS  ISLE  (Nevis,  B.   W.  I.) 
SENATOR  NORTH  (Washington) 

PATIENCE   SPARHAWK  AND   HER    TIMES    (Monterey, 
California,  and  New  York) 

THE  ARISTOCRATS  (The  Adirondack!) 

THE    BELL    IN    THE    FOG:    Short    Stories    of    Various 
Climes  and  Phases 


qpJt  l>u  A  mold  (xitttit,  JV.  F. 


GISELA 


THE 

WHITE  MORNING 

A  NOVEL  OF  THE  POWER  OF  THE 
GERMAN   WOMEN   IN  WARTIME 


BY 
GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 


NEW  YORK 

FREDERICK  A.  STOKES  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


a  *' 


Copyright,  1918,  by 
GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

All  rights  reserved  including  that  of 

translation  into  foreign 

languages 


THE  WHITE  MORNING 


372172 


THE  WHITE  MORNING 


COUNTESS  GISELA  NIEBUHR  sat  in 
the  long  dusk  of  Munich  staring  over  at 
the  beautiful  park  that  in  happier  days  had 
been  famous  in  the  world  as  the  Englischer 
Garten,  and  deliberately  recalled  on  what 
might  be  the  last  night  of  her  life  the  succes 
sive  causes  that  had  led  to  her  profound  dis 
satisfaction  with  her  country  as  a  woman. 
She  was  so  thoroughly  disgusted  with  it  as  a 
German  that  personal  grievances  were  far 
from  necessary  to  fortify  her  for  the  mo 
mentous  role  she  was  to  play  with  the  dawn ; 
but  in  this  rare  hour  of  leisure  it  amused  her 
naturally  introspective  mind  to  rehearse  cer 
tain  episodes  whose  sum  had  made  her  what 
she  was. 

i 


2         THE  WRITE  MORNING 

When  she  was  fourteen  and  her  sisters 
Lili  and  Elsa  sixteen  and  eighteen  they  had 
met  in  the  attic  of  their  home  in  Berlin  one 
afternoon  when  their  father  was  automati 
cally  at  his  club  and  their  mother  taking  her 
prescribed  hour  of  rest,  and  solemnly  pledged 
one  another  never  to  marry.  The  causes  of 
this  vital  conclave  were  both  cumulative  and 
immediate.  Their  father,  the  Herr  Graf,  a 
fine  looking  junker  of  sixty  odd,  with  a  rov 
ing  eye  and  a  martial  air  despite  a  corpulence 
which  annoyed  him  excessively,  had  trans 
ferred  his  lost  authority  over  his  regiment 
to  his  household.  The  boys  were  in  their 
own  regiments  and  rid  of  parental  discipline, 
but  the  countess  and  the  girls  received  the 
full  benefit  of  his  military,  and  Prussian,  rel 
ish  for  despotism. 

In  his  essence  a  kind  man  and  fond  of  his 
women,  he  balked  their  every  individual  wish 
and  allowed  them  practically  no  liberty. 
They  never  left  the  house  unattended,  like  the 
American  girls  and  those  fortunate  beings  of 
the  student  class.  Lili  had  a  charming  voice 


THE  WHITE  MORNING         3 

and  was  consumed  with  ambition  to  be  an 
operatic  star.  She  had  summoned  her  cour 
age  upon  one  memorable  occasion  and 
broached  the  subject  to  her  father.  All  the 
terrified  family  had  expected  his  instant  dis 
solution  from  apoplexy,  and  in  spite  of  his 
petty  tyrannies  they  loved  him.  The  best  in 
structor  in  Berlin  continued  to  give  her  les 
sons,  as  nothing  gave  the  Graf  more  pleasure 
of  an  evening  than  her  warblings. 

The  household,  quite  apart  from  the  Frau 
Grafin's  admirable  management,  ran  with 
military  precision,  and  no  one  dared  to  be  the 
fraction  of  a  minute  late  for  meals  or  social 
engagements.  They  attended  the  theater, 
the  opera,  court  functions,  dinners,  balls,  on 
stated  nights,  and  unless  the  Kaiser  took  a 
whim  and  altered  a  date,  there  was  no 
deviation  from  this  routine  year  in  and  out. 
They  walked  at  the  same  hour,  drove  in  the 
Tiergarten  with  the  rest  of  fashionable  Ber 
lin,  started  for  their  castle  in  the  Saxon  Alps 
not  only  upon  the  same  day  but  on  the 
same  train  every  summer,  and  the  electric 


4         THE  WHITE  MORNING 

lights  went  out  at  precisely  the  same  moment 
every  night;  the  count's  faithful  steward 
manipulated  a  central  stop.  They  were  en 
couraged  to  read  and  study,  but  not — oh,  by 
no  means — to  have  individual  opinions.  The 
men  of  Germany  were  there  to  do  the  thinking 
and  they  did  it. 

Perhaps  the  rebellion  of  the  Niebuhr  girls 
would  never  have  crystallized  (for,  after  all, 
their  everyday  experience  was  ntuch  like  that 
of  other  girls  of  their  class,  merely  intensified 
by  their  father's  persistence  of  executive 
ardors)  had  it  not  been  for  two  subtle  influ 
ences,  quite  unsuspected  by  the  haughty 
Kammerherr :  they  had  an  American  friend, 
Kate  Terriss,  who  was  "finishing  her  voice " 
in  Berlin,  and  their  married  sister,  Mariette, 
had  recently  spent  a  fortnight  in  the  paternal 
nest. 

The  count  despised  the  entire  American 
race,  as  all  good  Prussians  did,  but  he  was  as 
wax  to  feminine  blandishments  outside  of  his 
family,  and  Miss  Terriss  was  pretty,  diplo 
matic,  alluring,  and  far  cleverer  than  he 


THE  WHITE  MORNING         5 

would  have  admitted  any  woman  could  be. 
She  wound  the  old  martinet  round  her  finger, 
subdued  her  rampant  Americanism  in  his  so 
ciety,  and  amused  herself  sowing  the  seeds  of 
rebellion  in  the  minds  of  "  those  poor  Niebuhr 
girls."  As  the  countess  also  liked  her,  she 
had  been  "in  and  out  of  the  house "  for 
nearly  a  year.  The  young  Prussians  had 
alternately  gasped  and  wept  at  the  amazing 
stories  of  the  liberty,  the  petting,  the  proces 
sion  of  "good  times "  enjoyed  by  American 
girls  of  their  own  class,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
invariable  prerogative  of  these  fortunate 
girls  to  choose  their  own  husbands;  who, 
according  to  the  unprincipled  Miss  Terriss, 
invariably  spoiled  their  wives,  and  permitted 
them  to  go  and  come,  to  spend  their  large 
personal  allowances,  as  they  listed.  Gisela 
closed  her  beloved  volume  of  Grimm's  fairy 
tales  and  never  opened  it  again. 

But  it  was  the  visit  of  Mariette  that  had 
marshalled  vague  dissatisfactions  to  an  or 
dered  climax.  She  had  left  her  husband  in 
the  garrison  town  she  had  married  with  the 


6         THE  WHITE  MORNING 

excellent  young  officer,  making  a  trifling  in 
disposition  of  her  mother  a  pretext  for  es 
cape.  On  the  night  before  her  departure  the 
four  girls  huddled  in  her  bed  after  the  opera 
and  listened  to  an  incisive  account  of  her 
brief  but  distasteful  period  of  matrimony. 
Not  that  she  suffered  from  tyranny.  Quite 
the  reverse.  Of  her  several  suitors  she  had 
cannily  engineered  into  her  father's  favor  a 
young  man  of  pleasing  appearance,  good  title 
and  fortune,  but  quite  without  character  be 
hind  his  fierce  upstanding  mustache.  Inher 
iting  her  father's  rigid  will,  she  had  kept  the 
young  officer  in  a  state  of  abject  submission. 
She  stroked  his  hair  in  public  as  if  he  had 
been  her  pet  dachshund,  and  patted  his  hand 
at  kindly  intervals  as  had  he  been  her  dear 
little  son. 

"But  Karl  has  the  soul  of  a  sheep,"  she 
informed  the  breathless  trio.  "You  might 
not  be  so  fortunate.  Far,  far  from  it.  How 
can  any  one  more  than  guess  before  one  is 
fairly  married  and  done  for?  Look  at  papa. 
Does  he  not  pass  in  society  as  quite  a  charm- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING         7 

ing  person?  The  women  like  him,  and  if 
poor  mama  died  he  could  get  another  quick 
as  a  wink.  But  at  the  best,  my  dear  girls, 
matrimony — in  Germany,  at  least — is  an  un 
mitigated  bore.  And  in  a  garrison  town! 
Literally,  there  is  no  liberty,  even  with  one's 
husband  under  the  thumb.  We  live  by  rote. 
Every  afternoon  I  have  to  take  coffee  at  some 
house  or  other,  when  all  those  tiresome 
women  are  not  at  my  own.  And  what  do  you 
suppose  they  talk  about — but  invariably? 
Lovel"  (With  ineffable  disdain.)  "Noth 
ing  else,  barring  gossip  and  scandal;  as  if 
they  got  any  good  out  of  love!  But  they 
are  stupid  for  the  most  part  and  gorged  with 
love  novels.  They  discuss  the  opera  or  the 
play  for  the  love  element  only,  or  the  sensual 
quality  of  the  music.  Let  me  tell  you  that 
although  I  married  to  get  rid  of  papa,  if  I 
had  it  to  do  over  I  should  accept  parental 
tyranny  as  the  lesser  evil.  Not  that  I  am 
not  fond  of  Karl  in  a  way.  He  is  a  dear  and 
would  be  quite  harmless  if  he  were  not  in 
love  with  me.  But  garrison  society — Gott, 


8         THE  WHITE  MORNING 

how  German  wives  would  rejoice  in  a  war! 
Think  of  the  freedom  of  being  a  Bed  Cross 
nurse,  and  all  the  men  at  the  front.  Officers 
would  be  your  fate,  too.  Papa  would  not 
look  at  a  man  who  was  not  in  the  army.  He 
despises  men  who  live  on  their  estates.  So 
take  my  advice  while  you  may.  Sit  tight,  as 
the  English  say.  Even  German  fathers  do 
not  live  forever.  The  lime  in  our  soil  sees  to 
that.  I  notice  papa's  face  gets  quite  purple 
after  dinner,  and  when  he  is  angry.  His 
arteries  must  have  been  hardening  for  twenty 
years. ' ' 

Lili  and  Elsa  were  quite  aghast  at  this 
naked  ratiocination,  but  Gisela  whispered: 
"We  might  elope,  you  know." 

"With  whom?  No  Englishman  or  Ameri 
can  ever  crosses  the  threshold,  and  Kate  has 
no  brothers.  The  students  have  no  money 
and  no  morals,  and,  what  is  worse,  no  baths. 
A  burgess  or  a  professional  would  be  quite 
as  intolerable,  and  no  man  of  our  class  would 
consent  to  an  elopement.  Germans  may  be 
sentimental  but  they  are  not  romantic  when 


THE  WHITE  MORNING         9 

it  comes  .to  settlements.  Now  take  my  ad 
vice." 

They  were  taking  it  on  this  fateful  day  in 
the  attic.  They  vowed  never  to  marry  even 
if  their  formidable  papa  locked  them  up  on 
bread  and  water. 

'  '  Which  would  be  rather  good  for  us, ' ?  re 
marked  the  practical  Elsa.  "I  am  sure  we 
eat  too  much,  and  Gisela  has  a  tendency  to 
plumpness.  But  your  turn  will  not  come  for 
four  years  yet,  dear  child.  It  is  poor  us  that 
will  need  all  our  vows. ' ' 

After  some  deliberation  they  concluded  to 
inform  their  mother  of  their  grim  resolve. 
Naturally  sympathetic,  a  pregnant  upheaval 
had  taken  place  in  that  good  lady's  psychol 
ogy  during  the  past  year.  Her  marriage,  al 
though  arranged  by  the  two  families,  had 
been  a  love  match  on  both  sides.  The  Graf 
was  a  handsome  dashing  and  passionate 
lover  and  she  a  beautiful  girl,  lively  and  com 
panionable.  Disillusion  was  slow  in  coming, 
for  she  had  been  brought  up  on  the  soundest 
German  principles  and  believed  in  the  natu- 


10       THE  WHITE  MORXIXG 

ral  superiority  of  the  male  as  she  did  in  the 
House  of  HohenzoHern  and  the  Lutheran  re- 


Bat  she  suspected,  daring  her  thirties,  that 
she  was,  after  all,  the  daughter  of  a  brilliant 
father  as  well  as  of  an  obsequious  mother, 
and  that  she  had  possibilities  of  miiif!  and 
spirit  that  clamored  for  development  and 
fired  the  imagination,  while  utterly  without 
hope.  In  other  words  she  was,  like  many 
another  German  woman,  in  her  secret  heart, 
an  individual  Bat  she  was  not  a  rebel;  her 
social  code  forbade  that  She  manufactured 
interests  for  herself  as  rapidly,  and  as  vari- 
ous,  as  possible,  preserved  her  good  looks  in 
spite  of  her  eight  children  (the  two  that 
followed  Gisela  died  in  infancy),  dressed  far 
better  than  most  German  women,  cultivated 
society,  gave  four  notable  musicales  a  season, 
and  was  devoted  to  her  sons  and  daughters, 
although  she  never  opposed  her  husband's 
stern  military  discipline  of  those  seemingly 
typical  TTMjVliAiMi  It  was  her  policy  to  keep 
flie  martinet  in  a  good  humor,  and  after  all — 


THE  WHITE  MORXIXG       11 

she  had  condemned  herself  not  to  think — 
what  better  destiny  than  to  be  a  German 
woman  of  the  higher  aristocracy?  They 
might  have  been  born  into  the  middle  class, 
where  there  were  quite  as  many  tyrants  as 
in  the  patrician,  and  vastly  fewer  compensa 
tions.  At  the  age  of  forty-four  she  believed 
herself  to  be  a  philosopher. 

>  ix  months  before  Marietta's  marriage  «W1 
shortly  after  the  birth  and  death  of  her  last 
child,  Fran  von  Xiebuhr  suddenly  returned 
to  her  bed,  prostrate,  on  the  verge  of  col 
lapse.  The  count  raged  that  any  wife  of  his 
should  dare  to  be  ill  or  absent  (when  not  ful 
filling  patriotic  obligations),  consult  her  own 
selfish  whims  by  having  nerves  and  lying 
speechless  in  bed.  But  he  had  a  very  consid 
erable  respect  for  Herr  Doktor  Meyers — a 
rank  plebeian  but  the  best  doctor  in  Berlin — 
and  when  that  family  adviser,  as  autocratic 
as  himself,  ordered  the  Fran  Grafin  to  go  to 
a  sanatorium  in  the  Austrian  Dolomites — but 
alone,  mind  you ! — and  remain  as  long  as  he 
— I,  myself,  Herr  Graf! — deemed  advisable, 


12       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

with,  no  intercourse,  personal  or  chirographi- 
cal  with  her  family,  the  Head  of  the  House 
of  Niebuhr  angrily  gave  his  consent  and  sent 
for  a  sister  to  chaperon  his  girls. 

The  countess  remained  until  the  eve  of 
Mariette's  wedding,  and  she  passed  those  six 
months  in  one  of  the  superlatively  beautiful 
mountain  resorts  of  Austria.  She  was  soli 
tary,  for  the  most  part,  and  she  did  an  ex 
cessive  amount  of  thinking.  She  returned  to 
her  duties  with  a  deep  disgust  of  life  as  she 
knew  it,  a  cynical  contempt  for  women,  and 
a  profound  sense  of  revolt.  Her  natural 
diplomacy  she  had  increased  tenfold. 

When  the  three  girls,  their  eyes  very  large, 
and  speaking  in  whispers,  although  their  fa 
ther  was  at  a  yearly  talk-fest  with  his  old 
brothers  in  arms,  confided  to  their  mother 
their  resolution  never  in  any  circumstances  to 
adopt  a  household  tyrant  of  their  own,  she 
nodded  understandingly. 

" Leave  it  to  me,"  she  said.  "Your  fa 
ther  can  be  managed,  little  as  he  suspects  it. 
I'll  find  the  weak  spot  in  each  of  the  suitors 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       13 

he  brings  to  the  house  and  set  him  against  all 
of  them. ' 

'  <  And  my  voice  ? ' '  asked  Lili  timidly.  But 
the  Frau  Grafin  shook  her  head.  "There  I 
cannot  help  you.  He  thinks  an  artistic  career 
would  disgrace  his  family,  and  that  is  the  end 
of  it.  Moreover,  he  regards  women  of  any 
class  in  public  life  as  a  disgrace  to  Germany. 
My  assistance  must  be  passive — apparently. 
It  will  be  enough  to  have  no  worse.  Take  my 
word  and  Mariette's  for  that." 

The  Grafin,  true  to  her  word,  quietly  dis 
posed  of  the  several  suitors  approved  by  her 
husband,  and  although  the  autocrat  sputtered 
and  raged — the  Grafin,  her  youngest  daughter 
shrewdly  surmised,  rather  encouraged  these 
exciting  tempers — arguing  that  these  three 
girls  bade  fair  to  remain  on  his  hands  for 
ever,  he  ended  always  by  agreeing  that  the 
young  officers  were  unworthy  of  an  alliance 
with  the  ancient  and  honorable  House  of  Nie- 
buhr. 

The  battles  ended  abruptly  when  Gisela  was 
eighteen  and  a  fat  Lieutenant  of  Uhlans,  suing 


14       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

for  the  hand  of  the  youngest  born,  and  vehe 
mently  supported  by  the  Graf,  had  just  been 
turned  adrift.  The  Graf  dropped  dead  in  his 
club.  He  left  a  surprisingly  small  estate  for 
one  who  had  presented  so  pompous  a  front  to 
the  world.  But  not  only  had  his  sons  been 
handsomely  portioned  when  they  entered  the 
army,  and  Mariette  when  she  married,  but  the 
excellent  count,  to  relieve  the  increasing 
monotony  of  days  no  longer  enlivened  by 
maneuvers  and  boudoirs,  had  amused  himself 
on  the  stock  exchange.  His  judgment  had 
been  singularly  bad  and  he  had  dropped  most 
of  his  capital  and  lived  on  the  rest. 

The  town  house  must  be  sold  and  the  coun 
tess  and  her  daughters  retire  to  her  castle  in 
the  Saxon  Alps.  As  there  were  no  portions 
for  the  girls,  the  haunting  terrors  of  matri 
mony  were  laid. 

The  four  women  took  their  comparative 
poverty  with  equanimity.  The  countess  had 
been  as  practical  and  economical  as  all  Ger 
man  housewives,  even  when  relieved  by 
housekeepers  and  stewards,  and  she  calcu- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       15 

lated  that  with  a  meager  staff  of  servants  and 
two  years  of  seclusion  she  should  be  able  to 
furnish  a  flat  in  Berlin  and  pay  a  year's  rent 
in  advance.  Then  by  living  for  half  the  year 
on  her  estate  she  should  save  enough  for  six 
highly  agreeable  months  in  the  capital.  Per 
haps  she  might  let  her  castle  to  some  rich 
brewer  or  American;  and  this  she  eventually 
did. 

Lili  was  given  permission  to  study  for  the 
operatic  stage  and  spend  the  following  winter 
in  Dresden,  where  Mariette's  husband  was 
now  quartered.  It  was  just  before  they 
moved  to  the  country  that  the  Grafin  said  to 
her  girls  as  they  sat  at  coffee  in  the  dis 
mantled  house : 

"You  shall  have  all  that  I  never  had,  fulfil 
all  the  secret  ambitions  of  my  younger  heart. 
If  you  are  individuals,  prove  it.  You  may  go 
on  the  stage,  write,  paint,  study  law,  medi 
cine,  what  you  will.  You  have  been  bred  aris 
tocrats  and  aristocrats  you  will  remain.  It 
is  not  liberty  that  vulgarizes.  Don't  hate 
men.  They  have  charming  phases  and 


16       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

moods;  but  avoid  entangling  alliances  until 
you  are  thirty.  After  that  you  will  know 
them  well  enough  to  avoid  that  fatal  initial 
submergence.  The  whole  point  is  to  begin 
with  your  eyes  open  and  your  campaign 
clearly  thought  out. 

"I,  too,  purpose  to  get  a  great  deal  out  of 
life  now  that  my  fate  is  in  my  own  hands.  By 
the  summer  we  shall  even  be  able  to  travel  a 
little.  Third-class,  yet  that  will  be  far  more 
amusing  than  stuffed  into  one  of  those  plush 

carriages  with  the  windows  closed  and  for 
bidden  to  speak  with  any  one  in  the  corridor. 
And  forced  to  carry  all  the  hand-luggage  off 
the  train  (when  your  father  had  an  economi 
cal  spasm  and  would  not  take  a  footman) 
while  he  stalked  out  first  as  if  we  did  not 
exist.  I  shall  never  marry  again — Gott  in 
Himmel,  no ! — but  I  shall  gather  about  me  all 
the  interesting  men  I  never  have  been  able  to 
have  ten  minutes'  conversation  with  alone; 
and,  so  far  as  is  humanly  possible,  do  exactly 
as  I  please.  My  ego  has  been  starved.  I 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       17 

shall  always  be  your  best  friend — but  think 
for  yourselves." 

Gisela  had  no  gift  that  she  was  aware  of, 
but  she  was  intellectual  and  had  longed  to 
finish  her  education  at  one  of  the  great  uni 
versities.  As  she  was  not  strong,  however, 
she  was  content  to  spend  a  year  in  the  moun 
tains;  and  then,  robust,  and  on  a  meager  in 
come,  she  went  to  Munich  to  attend  the  lec 
tures  on  art  and  literature  and  to  perfect 
herself  in  French  and  English.  She  took  a 
small  room  in  an  old  tower  near  the  Frauen- 
kirche  and  lived  the  students'  life,  probably 
the  freest  of  any  city  in  the  world.  She 
dropped  her  title  and  name  lest  she  be  barred 
from  that  socialistic  community  as  well  as  dis 
covered  by  horrified  relatives,  and  called  her 
self  Gisela  Doring.  After  she  had  taken  her 
degree  she  passed  a  month  in  Berlin  with 
her  mother,  who  already  had  established  a 
salon,  but  she  was  determined  to  support  her 
self  and  see  the  world  at  the  same  time. 
Herr  Doktor  Meyers  found  her  a  position  as 


18       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

governess  with  a  wealthy  American  patient, 
and,  under  her  assumed  name,  she  sailed  im 
mediately  for  New  York. 

The  Bolands  had  a  house  in  upper  Fifth 
Avenue  and  others  at  Newport,  Aiken  and 
Bar  Harbor;  and  when  not  occupying  these 
stations  were  in  Europe  or  southern  Cali 
fornia.  The  two  little  girls  passed  the  sum 
mer  at  Bar  Harbor  with  their  governess. 

It  took  Gisela  some  time  to  accustom  her 
self  to  the  position  of  upper  servant  in  that 
household  of  many  servants,  but  she  pos 
sessed  humor  and  she  had  had  governesses 
herself.  Her  salary  was  large,  she  had  one 
entire  day  in  the  week  to  herself,  except  at 
Bar  Harbor,  and  during  her  last  summer  in 
the  United  States  Mrs.  Boland  had  a  violent 
attack  of  "America  first "  and  took  her  chil 
dren  and  their  admirable  governess  not  only 
to  California  but  to  the  Yellowstone  Park,  the 
Grand  Canon  and  Canada.  They  traveled  in 
a  private  car,  and  Gisela,  who  could  enjoy 
the  comfortless  quarters  of  a  student  flat  in 
Munich  with  all  that  life  meant  in  the  free 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       19 

and  beautiful  city  by  the  Isar,  could  also  revel 
in  luxury;  and  this  wonderful  summer,  fol 
lowing  as  it  did  the  bitter  climax  of  her  first 
serious  love  affair,  seemed  to  her  all  the  con 
solation  that  a  mere  woman  could  ask.  At 
all  events  she  felt  for  it  an  intense  and  last 
ing  gratitude. 


It  was  during  her  first  summer  at  Bar  Har 
bor  that  the  second  determining  experience 
of  her  life  began,  and  it  lasted  for  three  years. 
She  dwelt  upon  it  to-night  with  humor,  sad 
ness,  and,  for  a  moment,  thrilling  regret,  but 
without  bitterness.  That  had  passed  long 
since. 

She  was  virtual  mistress  of  the  house  at 
Bar  Harbor,  and  as  the  children  had  a  trained 
nurse  and  a  maid,  besides  many  little  friends, 
she  had  more  leisure  than  in  the  city  with 
her  one  day  of  complete  detachment.  She 
met  Freiherr  Franz  von  Nettelbeck  when  she 
was  walking  with  her  charges  and  he  was 
strolling  with  the  little  girls  of  the  Howland 


20       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

family.  The  introductions  were  informal, 
and  as  they  fell  naturally  into  German  there 
was  an  immediate  bond.  Nettelbeck  was  an 
attache  of  the  German  Embassy  who  pre 
ferred  to  spend  his  summers  at  Bar  Harbor. 
He  was  of  the  fair  type  of  German  most  famil 
iar  to  Americans,  with  a  fine  slim  military 
figure,  deep  fiery  blue  eyes  and  a  lively  mind. 
His  golden  hair  and  mustache  stood  up 
aggressively,  and  his  carriage  was  exceeding 
haughty,  but  those  were  details  too  familiar 
to  be  counted  against  him  by  Gisela.  Her 
rich  brunette  beauty  was  now  as  ripe  as  her 
tall  full  figure,  and  she  was  one  of  those 
women,  rare  in  Germany,  who  could  dress 
well  on  nothing  at  all.  She  too  possessed  a 
lively  mind,  and  after  her  long  New  York 
winter  was  feeling  her  isolation.  Her  first 
interview  (which  included  a  long  stroll  and  a 
canoe  ride)  with  this  young  diplomat  of  her 
own  land,  visibly  lifted  her  spirits,  and  she 
sang  as  she  braided  her  heavy  mass  of  hair 
that  night. 
Franz,  like  most  unattached  young  Ger- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       21 

mans,  was  on  the  lookout  for  a  soul-mate 
(which  he  was  far  too  sophisticated  to  an 
ticipate  in  matrimony),  and  this  handsome, 
brilliant,  subtly  responsive,  and  wholly 
charming  young  woman  of  the  only  country 
worth  mentioning  entered  his  life  when  he 
too  was  lonely  and  rather  bored.  It  was  his 
third  year  in  the  United  States  of  America 
and  he  did  not  like  the  life  nor  the  people. 
Nevertheless,  he  was  trying  to  make  up  his 
mind  to  pay  court  to  Ann  Howland,  a  young 
lady  whose  dashing  beauty  was  somewhat 
overpoised  by  salient  force  of  character  and 
an  uncompromisingly  keen  and  direct  mind, 
but  whose  fortune  eclipsed  by  several  mil 
lions  that  of  the  high-born  maiden  selected  by 
his  family. 

Here  was  a  heaven-sent  interval,  with  in 
tellectual  companionship  in  addition  to  the 
game  of  the  gods.  Being  a  German  girl, 
Gisela  Doring  would  be  aware  that  he  could 
not  marry  out  of  his  class,  unless  the  plebeian 
pill  were  heavily  gilded.  To  do  him  justice, 
he  would  not  have  married  the  wealthiest 


22       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

plebeian  in  Germany.  An  American:  that 
was  another  matter.  If  there  were  such  a 
thing  as  an  aristocracy  in  this  absurd  coun 
try  which  pretended  to  be  a  democracy  and 
whose  "society"  was  erected  upon  the  visi 
ble  and  screaming  American  dollar,  no  doubt 
Miss  Howland  belonged  to  the  highest  rank. 
In  Germany  she  would  have  been  a  princess 
— probably  of  a  mediatized  house,  and,  he 
confessed  it  amiably  enough,  she  looked  the 
part  more  unapologetically  than  several  he 
could  mention. 

So  did  Gisela  Doring.  He  sighed  that  a 
woman  who  would  have  graced  the  court  of 
his  Kaiser  should  have  been  tossed  by  a 
bungling  fate  into  the  rank  and  file  of  the 
good  German  people;  so  laudably  content  to 
play  their  insignificant  part  in  their  coun 
try's  magnificent  destiny. 

Gisela  never  told  him  the  truth.  Some 
times,  irritated  by  his  subtle  arrogance,  she 
was  tempted.  Also  consuming  love  tempted 
her.  But  of  what  use!  She  was  without 
fortune  and  he  must  add  to  his.  He  had  a 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       23 

limited  income  and  expensive  tastes,  and 
when  a  young  nobleman  in  the  diplomatic 
service  marries  he  must  take  a  house  and  live 
with  a  certain  amount  of  state.  Moreover, 
he  intended  to  be  an  ambassador  before  he 
was  forty-five,  and  he  was  justified  in  his  am 
bitions,  for  he  was  exceptionally  clever  and 
his  rise  had  been  rapid.  But  now  he  was 
care-free  and  young,  and  love  was  his  right. 

Gisela  understood  him  perfectly.  Not  only 
was  she  of  his  class,  but  her  brother  Karl  had 
madly  loved  a  girl  in  a  chocolate  shop  and 
wept  tempestuously  beside  her  bed  while  their 
father  slept.  He  married  philosophically 
when  his  hour  struck. 

But  if  she  understood  she  was  also  roman 
tic.  She  forgot  her  vow  to  live  alone,  her 
mother's  advice,  and  dreamed  of  a  moment 
of  overwhelming  madness  which  would 
sweep  them  both  up  to  the  little  church  on  the 
mountain.  There,  like  a  true  heroine  of  old- 
time  fiction,  she  would  announce  her  own 
name  at  the  altar.  This  moment,  however, 
did  not  arrive.  Nettelbeck,  too,  was  roman- 


24       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

tic,  but  his  head  was  as  level  within  as  it  was 
flat  behind.  He  never  went  near  the  church 
on  the  mountain. 

There  was  no  surface  lovemaking  during 
the  first  two  summers,  or  in  the  winter  follow 
ing  the  second  summer,  when  he  came  over 
from  Washington  on  her  Wednesday  as  often 
as  he  could,  and  they  had  luncheon  and  tea 
in  byway  restaurants.  They  were  both  fasci 
nated  by  the  game,  and  they  had  an  infinite 
number  of  things  to  talk  about,  for  their 
minds  were  really  congenial.  They  disputed 
with  fire  and  fury.  It  was  a  part  of  Gisela's 
dormant  genius  to  grasp  instinctively  the 
psychology  of  foreign  nations,  and  before  she 
had  been  in  the  United  States  a  year  she  un 
derstood  it  far  better  than  Nettelbeck  ever 
would.  Even  if  he  had  despised  it  less  he 
would  have  lavished  all  the  resources  of  his 
wit  upon  a  country  so  different  from  Ger 
many  in  every  phase  that  it  must  necessarily 
be  negligible  save  as  a  future  colony  of  Prus 
sia,  if  only  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  Gisela's 
long  eyes  open  and  flash,  the  dusky  red  in 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       25 

her  cheeks  burn  crimson  and  her  bosom  heave 
at  his  "  junker  narrow-mindedness  and  stu 
pid  arrogance  " — ;  "a  stupidity  that  will  be 
the  ruin  of  Germany  in  the  end!"  she  ex 
claimed  one  day  in  a  sudden  moment  of  illu 
mination,  for,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  she  had 
given  little  thought  to  politics.  However,  she 
recalled  her  typical  papa. 

Of  course  they  talked  their  German  souls 
inside  out.  At  least  Nettelbeck  did.  As  time 
went  on,  Gisela  used  her  frankness  as  a  mask 
while  her  soul  dodged  in  panic.  She  believed 
him  to  be  lightly  and  agreeably  in  love  with 
her  (she  had  witnessed  many  summer  flirta 
tions  at  Bar  Harbor,  and  been  laid  siege  to, 
by  more  than  one  young  American,  idle,  enter 
prising,  charming  and  quite  irresponsible), 
and  she  was  appalled  at  her  own  capacity  for 
love  and  suffering,  the  complete  rout  of  her 
theories,  based  on  harsh  experience,  before 
the  ancient  instinct  to  unleash  her  woman 
hood  at  any  cost. 

She  plunged  into  a  serious  study  of  the 
country,  which  she  had  heretofore  absorbed 


26       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

with  her  avid  mental  conduits,  and  read  in 
numerable  newspapers,  magazines,  elucidat 
ing  literature  of  all  sorts,  besides  the  best  his 
tories  of  the  nation  and  the  illuminating  biog 
raphies  of  its  distinguished  men  in  politics 
and  the  arts.  She  was  deeply  responsive  to 
the  freedom  of  the  individual  in  this  great 
whirling  heterogeneous  land,  and  as  her  du 
ties  at  any  time  were  the  reverse  of  onerous, 
it  was  imperative  to  keep  her  consciousness 
as  detached  from  her  inner  life  as  possible. 
But  at  the  back  of  her  mind  was  always 
the  haunting  terror  that  he  never  would  come 
again,  that  he  was  really  more  attracted  to 
Ann  Rowland  than  he  knew;  and  of  all 
American  women  whom  Gisela  had  met  she 
admired  Miss  Howland  preeminently.  She 
was  not  only  beautiful  in  the  grand  manner 
but  she  possessed  intellect  as  distinguished 
from  the  surface  "brightness"  of  so  many  of 
her  countrywomen,  and  had  made  a  deep  im 
pression  upon  even  the  superlatively  educated 
German  girl  when  they  had  chanced  to  meet 
and  talk  at  children's  picnics  at  Bar  liar- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       27 

bor,  or  when  the  triumphant  young  beauty 
ran  up  to  the  nursery  in  town  to  bring  a  mes 
sage  to  the  little  Bolands  from  her  sisters. 
It  was  true  that  hers  was  not  the  seductive 
type  of  beauty,  that  her  large  gray  eyes  were 
cool  and  appraising,  her  fine  skin  quite  with 
out  color,  and  her  soft  abundant  hair  little 
darker  than  Franz's  own,  but  she  could  be 
feminine  and  charming  when  she  chose  and 
she  would  be  a  wife  in  whom  even  a  German 
would  experience  a  secret  and  swelling  pride. 

What  chance  had  she — she — Gisela  Dor  ing? 

There  were  days  and  weeks,  during  that 
second  winter,  when  she  was  tormented  by  a 
sort  of  sub-hysteria,  a  stifled  voice  in  the 
region  of  her  heart  threatening  to  force  its 
way  out  and  shriek.  There  were  times  when 
she  gave  way  to  despair,  and  thought  of  her 
vigorous  youth  with  a  shudder,  and  at  other 
times  she  was  so  angry  and  humiliated  at 
her  surrender  and  secret  chaos,  that  she  was 
on  the  point  more  than  once  of  breaking  defi 
nitely  with  Franz  Nettelbeck,  or  even  of  going 
back  to  Germany.  If  he  missed  a  Wednes- 


28       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

day,  or  failed  to  write,  she  slipped  out  of  the 
house  at  night  and  paced  Central  Park  for 
hours,  fighting  her  rebellious  nerves  with  her 
pride  and  the  strong  independent  will  that 
she  had  believed  would  enable  her  to  leap 
lightly  over  every  pitfall  in  life. 

Then  he  would  come  and  her  spirits  would 
soar,  her  whole  awakened  being  possessed  by 
a  sort  of  reckless  fury,  a  desperate  resolve  to 
enjoy  the  meager  portion  of  happiness  allot 
ted  to  her  by  an  always  grudging  fate;  and 
for  a  few  days  after  he  left  she  would  give 
herself  up  to  blissful  and  extravagant 
dreams. 

But  Nettelbeck  was  by  no  means  lightly  in 
love  with  Gisela  Doring.  During  the  third 
summer,  partly  owing  to  the  increased  inde 
pendence  of  her  growing  charges,  partly  to 
his  own  expert  management,  they  met  in  long 
solitudes  seldom  disturbed.  Gisela  dismissed 
fears,  ignored  the  inevitable  end,  plunged 
headlong  and  was  wildly  happy.  Nettelbeck 
was  an  ardent  and  absorbed  lover,  for  he 
knew  that  his  time  was  short,  and  he  was  de- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       29 

termined  to  have  one  perfect  memory  in  his 
secret  life  that  the  woman  who  bore  his  name 
should  never  violate.  Miss  Howland  had 
meted  him  the  portion  his  dilatoriness  invited 
and  married  a  fine  upstanding  young  Ameri 
can  whose  career  was  in  Washington;  and 
his  family  had  peremptorily  commanded  him 
to  return  in  the  spring  (with  the  Kaiser's 
permission,  a  mandate  in  itself)  and  marry 
the  patient  Baronin  Irma  Hammorworth. 

And  so  for  a  summer  and  a  winter  they 
were  happy. 

Gisela  averted  her  mind  tonight  from  the 
parting  with  something  of  the  almost  forgot 
ten  panic.  She  had  never  dared  to  dwell 
upon  it,  nor  on  the  month  that  followed.  Her 
powerful  will  had  rebelled  finally  and  she  had 
fought  down  and  out  of  her  consciously  func 
tioning  mind  the  details  of  her  tragic  passion, 
and  even  reveled  arrogantly  in  the  sensation 
of  deliverance  from  the  slavery  of  love. 
Simultaneously  she  was  swept  off  to  see  the 
great  natural  wonders  of  the  American  conti 
nent  and  they  had  intoned  the  requiem. 


30       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

The  following  autumn  she  returned  to 
Germany  and  paid  her  mother  another  brief 
visit. 

There  all  was  well.  Frau  von  Niebuhr, 
who  had  not  developed  a  white  hair  and  whose 
Viennese  maid  was  a  magician  in  the  matter 
of  gowns  and  complexion,  was  enjoying  life 
and  had  a  daring  salon ;  that  is  to  say  gather 
ings  in  which  all  the  men  did  not  wear  uni 
forms  nor  prefix  the  sacred  von.  She  drew 
the  line  at  bad  manners,  but  otherwise  all 
(and  of  any  nation)  who  had  distinguished 
themselves,  or  possessed  the  priceless  gift  of 
personality,  were  welcome  there;  and  al 
though  she  lived  to  be  amused  and  make  up 
what  she  had  lost  during  thirty  unspeakable 
years,  she  progressed  inevitably  in  keenness 
of  insight  and  breadth  of  vision.  She  had 
become  a  student  of  politics  and  stared  into 
the  future  with  deepening  apprehension,  but 
of  this  she  gave  not  a  hint  to  Gisela.  Mari- 
ette  was  her  closest  friend  and  only  confi 
dante.  Mariette  was  now  living  in  Berlin, 
and  amusing  herself  in  ways  Frau  von 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       31 

Niebuhr  disapproved,  mainly  because  she 
thought  it  wiser  to  banish  men  from  one 9s  in 
ner  life  altogether ;  but,  true  to  her  code,  she 
forebore  remonstrance. 

Lili,  having  discovered  that  her  voice  was 
not  for  grand  opera,  had  philosophically  de 
scended  to  the  concert  stage  and  was  excitedly 
happy  in  her  success  and  independence.  Elsa 
was  a  Bed  Cross  nurse. 

Grisela  met  Franz  von  Nettelbeck  at  a  court 
function  and  had  her  little  revenge.  He  was 
furious,  and  vowed,  quite  audibly,  that  he 
would  never  forgive  her.  But  Gisela  was 
merely  disturbed  lest  the  Obersthofmeisterin 
who  stood  but  three  feet  away  overhear  his 
caustic  remarks.  Distinguished  professors 
(without  their  wives)  might  go  to  court  as  a 
reward  for  shedding  added  luster  upon  the 
German  Empire,  but  lesser  mortals  who  had 
received  payment  for  services  rendered 
might  not.  Her  independent  mother,  still  a 
favorite,  for  she  was  exceeding  discreet, 
would  have  incurred  the  imperial  displeasure 
if  the  truth  were  known.  However,  the  inci- 


32       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

dent  passed  unnoticed,  and  Franz,  whatever 
his  shortcomings,  was  a  gentleman  and  kept 
her  secret. 

The  scene  at  the  palace  had  been  brilliant 
and  sustaining  and  she  had  received  much 
personal  homage,  for  she  was  looking  very 
beautiful  and  radiant,  and  the  little  adventure 
had  been  incense  to  her  pride  (moreover  the 
young  Freif  rau  von  Nettelbeck,  whom  she  saw 
on  his  arm  later,  was  an  insignificant  little 
hausfrau) ;  but  when  she  was  in  her  room 
after  midnight  she  realized  grimly  that  if 
she  had  not  done  her  work  so  well  during  that 
terrible  month  in  New  York  and  buried  her 
sex  heart,  she  should  once  more  be  beating  the 
floor  or  the  wall  with  her  impotent  hands. 
But  the  knowledge  of  her  immunity  made  her 
a  little  sad. 


The  next  episode  to  her  grim  humor  was 
wholly  amusing,  although  it  played  its  part  in 
her  developing  sense  of  revolt  against  the 
attitude  of  the  German  male  to  the  sex  of  the 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       33 

mother  that  bore  him.  She  returned  to 
Munich  after  a  month  in  Berlin,  for  by  this 
time  she  had  made  up  her  mind  to  write,  and 
the  city  by  the  Isar  was  the  most  beautiful  in 
the  world  to  write  and  to  dream  in.  More 
over,  she  wished  to  attend  the  lectures  on 
drama  at  the  University. 

The  four  years  in  America,  during  which 
she  had,  in  spite  of  her  sentimental  pre 
occupation,  studied  diligently  every  phase 
that  passed  before  her  keen  critical  vision, 
analyzed  every  person  she  had  met,  and 
passed  many  of  her  evenings  in  the  study  of 
the  best  contemporary  fiction,  had,  associated 
with  the  spur  of  her  own  upheaval,  developed 
her  imagination,  and  her  head  was  full  of  un 
written  stories.  They  were  highly  realistic, 
of  course,  as  became  a  modern  German,  but 
unmistakably  dramatic. 

She  attended  the  lectures,  practising  on 
short  stories  meanwhile,  devoting  most  of  her 
effort  to  becoming  a  stylist,  that  she  might 
attain  immediate  recognition  whatever  her 
matter.  She  lived  in  a  small  but  comfortable 


34       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

hotel,  for  not  only  had  she  saved  the  greater 
part  of  her  salary,  but  the  Bolands,  however 
oblivious  socially  of  a  paid  attendant,  had  a 
magnificent  way  with  them  at  Christmas,  and 
had  given  her  an  even  larger  cheque  at 
parting. 

In  Munich  she  was  once  more  Gisela  Dor- 
ing,  once  more  led  the  student  life.  There  are 
liberties  even  for  people  of  rank  in  Munich, 
and  many  nobles,  exasperated  with  the  rigid 
class  lines  of  Berlin  and  other  German  capi 
tals,  move  there,  and,  while  careful  to  attend 
court  functions,  make  intelligent  friends  in  all 
sets.  They  are,  or  were,  the  happiest  people 
in  Germany.  Here  Gisela  could  sit  alone  in 
a  cafe  by  the  hour  reading  the  illustrated 
papers  and  smoking  with  her  coffee,  attract 
ing  no  attention  whatever.  She  joined  par 
ties  of  students  during  the  summer  and 
tramped  the  Bavarian  Alps,  and  she  danced 
all  night  at  student  balls.  Nevertheless,  she 
managed  to  hold  herself  somewhat  aloof  and 
it  was  understood  that  she  did  not  live  the 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       35 

"loose"  life  of  the  "artist  class. "  She  was 
much  admired  for  her  stately  beauty  and  her 
style,  and  if  the  young  people  of  that  free  and 
easy  community  were  at  times  inclined  to  re 
sent  a  manifest  difference,  they  succumbed  to 
her  magnetism,  and  respected  her  obvious 
devotion  to  a  high  literary  ideal. 

It  was  during  her  second  winter  that  she 
met  Georg  Zottmyer. 

He  was  a  tall,  narrow,  angular  young  man 
with  a  small  clipped  head  and  preeminent 
ears.  His  narrow  face  was  set  with  nar 
rower  features,  and  his  eyes  were  very 
bright,  and  the  windows  of  his  conceit.  Al 
though  his  income  was  minute  he  boasted  a 
father  of  note  in  the  University  of  Leipzig, 
and  his  mother  had  traveled  and  written  a 
scathing  satire  on  the  United  States  of 
America.  He  had  not  a  grain  of  originality 
or  imagination,  but  he  too  was  taking  the 
course  in  dramatic  art,  and  reading  for  that 
degree  without  whose  magic  letters  he  could 
not  hope  to  take  his  place  in  the  world  of  art 


36       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

to  which  his  parts  entitled  him.  He  met 
Gisela  in  the  lecture  room  and  immediately 
became  her  cavalier. 

At  first  Gisela  endeavored  to  get  rid  of  him 
by  an  icy  front,  but  this  he  took  for  feminine 
coquetry  and  his  own  front  was  serene.  As 
he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  be  a  dramatist 
merely  because  the  career  appealed  acutely  to 
his  itching  ambition,  so  did  he  in  due  course 
make  up  his  mind  to  marry  this  handsome 
brunette  (what  hair  he  had  was  drab)  who 
bore  all  the  earmarks  of  secret  wealth  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  she  lived  in  a  small  hotel.  As 
time  went  on,  Gisela  resigned  herself  and  put 
his  little  ego  under  her  microscope. 

His  wooing  was  methodical.  He  not  only 
walked  home  with  her  after  every  lecture,  but 
he  gave  her  a  series  of  teas  in  his  high  little 
flat,  and  he  really  did  know  "people."  His 
parental  introductions  had  given  him  the 
entree  to  the  professional  circles,  and  he  cul 
tivated  society  both  semi-fashionable  and 
ultra-literary.  He  knew  no  one  who  had  not 
' '  arrived. ' y 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       37 

He  chose  an  unpropitious  day  for  a  tenta 
tive  declaration  of  his  intentions.  It  was 
very  cold.  White  mufflers  protected  his  out 
standing  ears,  a  gray  woolen  scarf  was  wound 
about  his  long  neck  and  almost  covered  his 
tight  little  mouth.  He  wore  mitts  and  wrist 
lets,  and  his  nose  was  crimson.  Gisela,  in  a 
new  set  of  furs,  sent  her  for  Christmas  by 
Mariette,  and  a  smart  gown  of  wine-colored 
cloth,  looked  radiant.  Her  dark  eyes  shone 
with  joy  in  the  cold  electric  air  of  that  high 
plateau,  her  cheeks  were  red,  her  warm  full- 
lipped  mouth  was  parted  over  her  even  white 
teeth.  They  walked  from  the  University  down 
the  great  Leopoldstrasse,  one  of  the  finest 
streets  in  Europe,  toward  the  Cafe  Luitpold, 
where  he  had  invited  her  to  drink  coffee. 

There  was  little  conversation  during  that 
brisk  walk.  He  was  frozen,  and  she  was  not 
thinking  of  him  at  all.  At  the  cafe  he  selected 
an  alcove  as  far  from  the  noisy  groups  of 
students  as  possible.  All  the  " trees"  were 
hung  with  colored  caps  and  the  atmosphere 
was  dense  with  smoke. 


38       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

Zottmyer,  who,  after  all,  was  young,  soon 
thawed  out  in  the  warm  room,  and  when  he 
had  cheered  his  interior  with  a  large  cup  of 
hot  coffee  and  lit  a  cigarette,  he  brought  up 
the  subject  of  matrimony.  He  had  no  inten 
tion  of  proposing  in  these  surroundings,  but 
it  was  time  to  pave  the  way — or  set  the  pat 
tern  of  the  tiling;  he  cultivated  the  divergent 
phrase. 

"It  is  time  I  married/'  he  announced,  and, 
not  to  appear  too  serious,  he  smiled  into  her 
glowing  face.  She  looked  happy  enough  to 
encourage  a  man  far  less  fatuous  than  Georg 
Zottmyer. 

"Yes?"  Gisela's  eyes  had  wandered  to 
the  nearest  group  of  students  and  she  was 
wondering  if  they  might  not  have  made  hand 
some  men  had  they  permitted  their  duel 
wounds  to  heal  instead  of  excoriating  them 
with  salt  and  pepper.  "Most  German  men 
marry  young." 

"I  am  not  conventional.  I  should  not 
dream  of  marrying  unless  I  found  a  young 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       39 

lady  who  possessed  everything  that  I  demand 
in  a  wife." 

"  Ah  f    What  then  do  you  demand  ? ' ' 

"  Every  thing. " 

"That  is  a  large  order.  What  do  you 
mean,  exactly." 

"I  mean,  of  course,  that  I  should  not  marry 
a  woman  who  did  not  have  in  the  first  place 
beauty,  that  I  might  be  proud  of  her  in  pub 
lic,  besides  refreshing  myself  with  the  sight 
of  her  in  private.  She  must  have  beauty  of 
figure  as  well  as  of  face,  as  I  detest  our 
dumpy  type  of  German  women.  And  she 
must  have  style,  and  dress  well.  It  would 
mortify  me  to  death,  particularly  after  I  had 
made  my  position,  to  go  about  with  one  of 
those  wives  that  seem  to  fall  to  the  lot  of 
most  intellectuals.  Soft-waisted,  bulging 
women,"  he  added  spitefully,  "how  I  hate 
them!" 

"Your  taste  is  admirable.  Our  women  are 
much  too  careless,  particularly  after  mar 
riage.  And  the  second  requirement!" 


40       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

"Oh,  a  small  fortune,  at  least.  I  could  not 
afford  to  marry,  otherwise,  and  although  I 
shall  no  doubt  make  a  large  income  in  due 
course,  I  must  begin  well.  I  prefer  a  house, 
as  it  gives  an  artist  a  more  serious  and  digni 
fied  position. " 

"Indeed,  yes. 

"And  of  course  my  wife  must  be  of  good 
birth,  as  good  as  my  own.  I  should  never 
dream  of  marrying  even  a  Venus  in  this  Bo 
hemian  class.  That  sort  of  thing  is  all  very 
well — "  He  waved  his  hand,  and  arched  an 
eyebrow,  and  Gisela  inferred  she  was  to  take 
quite  a  number  of  amours  for  granted ;  much, 
for  instance,  as  she  would  those  of  a  hand 
some  officer  who  sat  alone  at  the  next  table 
and  who  looked  infinitely  bored  with  love  and 
longing  for  war. 

"She  must — it  goes  without  saying — be  in 
tellectual,  clever,  bright,  amusing.  I  must 
have  companionship.  Not  an  artist,  however. 
I  should  never  permit  my  wife  to  write  or 
model  or  sing  for  the  public.  And  she  must 
have  the  social  talent,  magnetism,  the  power 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       41 

to  charm  whom  she  will.  That  would  help 
me  infinitely  in  my  career. ' ' 

6 '  Is  that  all  1" 

"Oh,  she  must  be  affectionate  and  a  good 
housekeeper,  but  most  German  women  have 
the  domestic  virtues.  Naturally,  she  must 
have  perfect  health.  I  detest  women  with 
nerves  and  moods. " 

Gisela  had  been  leaning  forward,  her  elbows 
on  the  table,  her  little  square  chin  on  her 
hands,  and  if  there  were  wondering  contempt 
in  her  eyes  he  saw  only  their  brilliance  and 
fixed  regard. 

"And  what,  may  I  ask,  do  you  purpose  to 
give  her  in  return  for  all  that?" 

He  flicked  the  ashes  from  his  cigarette,  and 
the  gesture  was  quite  without  affectation. 
"What  has  that  to  do  with  it?" 

"Well — only — you  think,  then,  that  in  re 
turn  for  all — but  all! — that  a  woman  has  to 
offer  a  man — any  man — you  should  not  feel 
yourself  bound  to  give  her  an  equal  measure 
in  return?" 

"I  have  not  given  the  matter  a  thought. 


42       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

Naturally  the  woman  I  select  will  see  all  in 
me  that  I  see  in  her.  Shall  we  get  out  of 
this  ?  I  feel  I  have  taken  a  cold.  Fresh  air 
is  a  drastic  but  efficient  corrective." 

He  escorted  her  to  her  hotel,  although  he 
gazed  longingly  down  his  own  street  as  they 
passed  it.  His  head  felt  overburdened  and 
it  was  awkward  manipulating  a  handkerchief 
with  mitts. 

Within  half  a  block  of  the  hotel  Gisela,  who 
had  been  walking  rapidly,  bending  a  little 
against  the  wind,  paused  and  drew  herself  up 
to  her  stately  height.  Cold  as  he  was  he 
thrilled  slightly  as  he  reflected  that  she  pos 
sessed  real  distinction;  almost  she  might  be 
hochwohlgeboren — yes,  quite.  He  tingled 
less  agreeably  as  he  recalled  a  snub  admin 
istered  by  a  great  lady  with  whom  he  had 
presumed  to  attempt  conversation  at  the 
house  of  a  liberal  little  Eussian  baroness. 
This  woman  would  snub  any  hochwohlge 
boren  who  presumed  to  snub  him  in  the  fu 
ture. 

"Herr   Zottmyer,"   said   Gisela,   and  her 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       43 

tones  were  as  crisp  as  the  air  blowing  down 
from  the  Alps,  "you  must  permit  me  to  give 
you  a  note  of  introduction  to  my  mother  when 
you  go  to  Berlin  next  week.  I  hope  you  will 
find  time  to  call  on  her. ' ' 

Zottmyer's  eyes  snapped  at  this  covert 
encouragement,  although  it  was  rather  for 
ward  in  a  German  girl  practically  to  ask  a 
man  his  intentions.  "I  shall  be  delighted  to 
call  on  Frau  Dormer — " 

"Countess  Niebuhr.  I  have  practised  a 
little  innocent  deception  here  in  Munich — 
for  obvious  reasons.  Also,  during  my  four 
years'  sojourn  in  America — " 

"In  America?"  His  brain,  a  fine,  concen 
trated,  Teutonic  organ,  strove  to  grapple  with 
two  ideas  at  once.  "You  have  been  in 
America  ? ' ' 

"Bather.  I  feel  half  an  American.  You 
have  no  idea  how  it  changed  my  point  of  view 
— oh,  but  in  many  ways !  The  men,  you  see, 
are  so  different  from  ours.  The  American 
woman  has  a  magnificent  position — " 

"Ridiculous,  uppish,  spoilt  creatures — " 


44       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

"But  how  delicious  to  be  spoiled.  You 
will  call  on  my  mother  1 9 ' 

Zottmyer  almost  choked.  "I  hate  the 
Prussians — above  all,  that  arrogant  junker 
class.  And  the  name  of  Niebuhr! — why,  it 
stands  for  all  that  junkerdom  means  in  its 
most  virulent  form ! ' ' 

"I  am  afraid  it  does.  My  brothers  are 
junkers  unalloyed.  But  I  can  assure  you 
that  my  mother  is  as  democratic  as  one  may 
be  in  Berlin.  She  has  quite  a  number  of 
friends  among  the  intellectuals — " 

"Would  she  consent  to  your  marriage  with 
a — a — mere  intellectual  I ' ' 

"What  has  that  to  do  with  it?  It  would 
never  occur  to  me  to  marry  out  of  my  own 
class.  That  is  always  a  mistake.  There  are, 
you  see, — well — subtle  differences  that  for 
bid  harmony — " 

' l  You  are  a  snob.  I  might  have  seen  it  be 
fore  this.  You  give  yourself  airs — "  He 
was  now  so  torn  between  fury  and  disappoint 
ment,  mortification  and  Teutonic  resentment 
at  being  obliged  to  diverge  abruptly  from  pre- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       45 

cisely  thought-out  tactics,  that  he  forgot  his 
physical  discomfort — and  incidentally  to  use 
his  handkerchief. 

"A  snob?  When  I  am  true  to  the  best 
traditions  of  my  race?  Did  you  not  tell  me 
that  you  would  not  marry  a  Venus  if  she  hap 
pened  to  be  born  outside  of  your  own  class? 
But  it  is  rather  cold  here — not  ?  Shall  I  send 
the  note  of  introduction  to  your  flat  ? ' ' 

1 '  I  would  not  put  my  foot  in  any  supercili 
ous  junker  palace,  and  I  never  wish  to  see 
you  again!"  He  whirled  about,  burying  his 
nose  in  his  handkerchief,  and  tore  down  the 
street. 

Gisela  laughed,  but  with  little  amusement. 
Her  sympathy  for  German  women  took  a  long 
stride.  But  she  forgot  him  a  few  moments 
later  at  her  desk. 


During  the  next  five  years  she  wrote  many 
short  stories  and  essays,  and  four  plays.  Her 
work  appealed  subtly  but  clearly  to  the  grow 
ing  rebellion  of  the  German  women;  she  was 


46       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

too  much  of  an  artist  to  write  frank  propa 
ganda  and  the  critics  were  long  waking  up  to 
the  object  of  her  work.  Her  first  three  plays 
were  failures,  but  the  fourth  ran  for  two  years 
and  a  half  and  was  played  all  over  Germany 
and  Austria.  It  was  a  brilliant,  dramatic, 
half-humorous,  half-tragic  exposition  of  the 
German  woman's  enforced  subservience  to 
man  as  compared  with  the  glorious  liberty  of 
the  somewhat  exaggerated  American  co- 
heroine. 

There  was  talk  of  suppressing  this  play  at 
first,  but  Countess  Niebuhr  brought  all  her 
influence  to  bear,  and  as  the  widow  of  one 
esteemed  junker  and  the  daughter  of  another 
far  more  important,  her  argument  that  her 
daughter  merely  labored  to  make  the  Ger 
man  woman  a  still  more  powerful  factor  in 
upholding  the  might  of  German  Kultur — 
that  being  the  secret  hidden  in  what  was 
after  all  but  a  fantasy — caused  the  powers  to 
shrug  their  shoulders  and  dismiss  the  matter. 

After  all,  was  not  the  play  by  a  woman, 
and  were  not  the  German  women  the  best 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       47 

trained  in  the  world!  Besides,  the  play  was 
amusing,  and  humor  destroyed  the  serious 
purpose  always.  Humor  made  the  Americans 
the  contemptible  race  they  were — fortunately 
for  the  future  plans  of  Germany.  They  took 
nothing  seriously.  In  time  they  would! 

Those  who  have  not  lived  in  Germany  have 
not  even  an  inkling  of  the  deep  slow  secret 
revolt  against  the  insolent  and  inconsiderate 
attitude  of  the  German  male  that  had  been 
growing  among  its  women  for  some  fifteen 
years  before  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  They 
ventured  no  public  meetings  or  militant  acts 
of  any  sort,  for  men  were  far  too  strong  for 
them  yet,  and  the  German  woman  is  by  nature 
retiring,  however  individualistic  her  ego. 
Their  only  outward  manifestation  was  the 
hideous  reformldeid,  a  typical  manifestation 
in  even  the  women  of  a  nation  whose  art  is  as 
ugly  as  it  often  is  interesting.  But  thousands 
of  them  were  muttering  to  one  another  and 
reading  with  envy  the  literature  of  woman's 
revolt  in  other  lands.  When  one  of  their  own 
sex  rose,  a  woman  of  the  highest  intelligence 


48       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

and  an  impeccable  style,  who,  although  she 
signed  herself  Gisela  Boring,  was  said  to  be 
a  rebellious  member  of  the  Prussian  aristoc 
racy,  their  own  vague  protests  slowly  crys 
tallized  and  they  grew  to  look  upon  her  as 
a  leader,  who  one  day  would  show  them  the 
path  out  of  bondage.  Her  correspondence 
grew  to  enormous  proportions,  but  she  an 
swered  every  letter,  fully  determined  by  this 
time  to  accomplish  something  more  than  a 
name  in  letters  while  incidentally  amusing 
herself  with  stirring  up  the  women  and  an 
noying  the  men.  But  although  clubs  were 
formed  to  discuss  her  work  and  letters,  they 
were  still  unsuspected  of  the  arrogant  men 
who  controlled  the  destinies  of  Germany. 
And  as  the  German  woman  is  the  reverse  of 
frank,  as  little  indication  of  the  slow  revolu 
tion  was  found  in  the  home.  The  solution 
was  as  far  off  as  ever,  but  German  women  are 
patient  and  they  bided  their  time,  exulting  in 
their  secret.  It  gave  them  a  sense  of  revenge 
and  power. 
Then  came  the  war. 


II 


GISELA,  like  all  the  good  women  of  Ger 
many,  flamed  with  patriotism  and 
righteous  indignation.  Eussia  and  France 
with  no  provocation,  with  no  motive  but  in 
sensate  ambition  on  the  one  hand  and  a  fest 
ering  desire  for  revenge  on  the  other,  had 
crossed  the  sacred  frontiers  of  the  great  Teu 
tonic  Empire.  A  French  aviator  had 
dropped  bombs  on  Neuremburg,  one  of  the 
artistic  treasures  of  Europe,  although,  merci 
fully,  his  bombs  had  inadvertently  been  filled 
with  air.  Then  followed  the  even  more  in 
defensible  act  of  Great  Britain,  whose  only 
motive  in  joining  forces  with  paper  allies  was 
to  aim  a  blow  at  the  glorious  commercial  pres 
tige  of  Germany,  the  object  of  her  fear  and 
hate  these  many  years. 

49 


50       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

Gisela  immediately  entered  the  hospital 
opened  by  her  mother  in  Berlin  and  took  a 
rapid  first-aid  course,  concentrating  upon  the 
work  all  the  fine  powers  of  her  mind  and 
strong  young  body.  Literature,  fame,  prop 
aganda  among  women,  all  were  dismissed. 
Although  victory  was  certain  in  a  few  months 
there  would  be  many  thousands  of  wounded 
and  she  was  filled  with  a  passionate  desire  to 
serve  those  heroes  and  martyrs  of  foreign 
hatred.  She  forgot  her  personal  experience 
of  the  German  male,  forgot  herself.  Her  be 
loved  Fatherland  was  attacked,  and  the  Ger 
man  male  in  his  heroic  resistance,  his 
triumphal  progress,  was  become  a  god. 
Dienen!  Dienen! 

She  had  no  time  to  ponder  upon  the  viola 
tion  of  Belgium  and  knew  nothing  of  the 
curious  escape  of  medieval  psychology  from 
the  formal  harness  of  modern  times.  She 
was  engaged  in  hard  menial  labor  during 
those  first  weeks  and  it  was  sufficient  to  know 
that  Germany  had  been  violated.  It  is  true 
that  her  warrior  parent  had  sometimes 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       51 

boasted  of  the  day  when  Germany  should 
rule  the  world,  and  that  he  had  referred  to 
the  Great  European  War  as  a  foregone  con 
clusion,  as  so  many  had  been  doing  these  past 
ten  or  fifteen  years ;  but  he  had  been  careful 
to  say  nothing  about  throwing  the  torch  into 
the  powder.  Gisela,  like  the  vast  majority  of 
civilians  in  the  Central  Empires,  had  grown 
too  accustomed  to  the  evidences  of  a  great 
standing  army  to  give  them  more  than  a  pass 
ing  thought.  Were  they  not,  then,  situate 
in  the  very  middle  of  Europe  ?  Surrounded 
by  envious  and  powerful  enemies!  What 
more  natural  than  that  they  should  be  ever  on 
the  alert? 

That  Germany  herself  would  strike  at 
the  peace  of  Europe,  a  peace  which  had 
brought  her  an  unexampled  prosperity  and 
eminence,  never  had  crossed  Gisela 's  mind. 
Nevertheless,  knowing  the  German  male  as 
she  did,  she  was  quite  sure  that  the  officers 
reveled  in  the  exchange  of  peace  for  war  as 
much  as  the  men  in  the  ranks  detested  it. 
She  could  see  Franz  von  Nettelbeck  barking 


52       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

out  orders  for  the  irresistible  advance,  his 
keen  blue  eyes  flashing  with  triumph,  his 
Prussian  upper  lip  curling  with  impatient 
scorn,  and  Georg  Zottmyer  grinding  his  teeth 
in  the  trenches  and  suffering  acutely  from 
dyspepsia. 

Until  the  summer  of  1916  she  was  very 
busy,  either  in  her  mother 's  hospital  or  in  one 
in  Munich  run  by  a  group  of  Socialist  friends 
under  Marie  von  Erkel.  She  glanced  at  the 
English  papers  sometimes,  but  assumed  that 
their  versions  of  the  war 's  origin,  and  of  Ger 
manic  methods,  were  for  home  effect,  and 
smiled  at  their  occasional  claims  of  victory. 

Poor  things !  By  this  time  she  had  seen  so 
much  mortal  suffering,  soothed  so  many  dying 
men  who  raved  of  unimaginable  horrors,  writ 
ten  so  many  pathetic  last  letters  to  mothers 
and  wives  and  sweethearts,  that  the  first 
mood  of  fury  and  hatred  had  long  since 
passed.  Her  mind,  normally  clear,  acute, 
just,  regained  its  poise.  Moreover,  those  five 
years  preceding  the  war,  during  which  she 
had  learned  to  use  her  gifts  for  the  benefit  of 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       53 

her  sex  instead  of  for  her  own  amusement 
and  fame,  played  their  insidious  part. 

When  she  was  ordered  to  take  charge  of  a 
hospital  in  Lille  in  June  of  the  second  year  of 
the  war  she  had  forced  herself  to  accept  the 
present  state  of  Europe  with  a  certain  phi 
losophy.  After  all,  war  was  its  normal,  its 
historic,  condition.  Following  a  somewhat 
unusual  interval  of  peace,  owing  to  the  benef 
icent  reign  of  the  German  Emperor,  the  war 
microbes  of  Europe,  cultured  in  the  Balkan 
swamps,  had,  through  some  miscalculation, 
after  a  deplorable  assassination,  ravaged  the 
entire  continent  instead  of  being  localized  as 
heretofore.  Men  were  men  and  kings  were 
kings  and  war  was  war.  Gisela  sometimes 
wondered  if  the  hideous  upheaval  were  any 
body's  fault,  if  the  desire  to  fight  had  not  been 
more  or  less  simultaneous  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  Germany  was  caught  napping  and  per 
mitted  Russia  and  France  to  sneak  over  her 
frontiers. 

The  sinking  of  the  Lusitania  and  other  pas 
senger  ships,  or  rather  the  results,  had  filled 


54       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

her  with  a  horror  that  might  have  developed 
into  protest  had  she  not  been  assured  that  the 
U-boats  had  purposely  waited  for  a  calm  sea, 
not  too  far  from  shore,  that  the  passengers 
might  have  every  opportunity  for  escape ;  and 
that  they  had  been  the  victims  of  contraband 
cargoes  of  ammunition  exploding,  badly  ad 
justed  life-boats,  panic  among  themselves, 
and  utter  inefficiency  and  selfishness  of  the 
officers  and  crew. 

These  excuses  sounded  plausible  to  a  young 
woman  still  too  occupied  to  ponder ;  but  dur 
ing  her  journey  through  Belgium  and  the  in 
vaded  districts  of  France  her  mind  grew  more 
and  more  uneasy.  Surely  an  army  so  uni 
formly  victorious,  an  army  which  only  fore- 
bore  to  press  forward  in  a  battle — like  that 
of  the  Marne,  for  instance — for  sound  strate 
gic  reasons,  should  have  found  it  unnecessary 
to  destroy  whole  towns  with  their  priceless 
monuments  of  art,  level  countless  insignificant 
villages,  and  reduce  their  inhabitants  to  cow 
ering  misery.  She  had  been  a  student  of 
history  and  had  inferred  that  modern  war- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       55 

fare  was  as  humane  as  war  may  be ;  witness 
the  fine  magnanimity  of  the  Japanese,  an 
Oriental  race.  This  passing  country,  which 
she  had  known  well  in  its  hey-day,  looked 
extraordinarily  like  the  historical  pictures 
of  the  inva3ions  of  Goths  and  Vandals  and 
Huns. 

' '  Huns ! ' '  She  had  resented  the  constant 
use  of  the  word  in  the  English  papers,  dis 
missing  it  finally  as  childish  spite.  Had  its 
usurpation  of  the  classic  and  noble  word 
"  Germans "  been  one  of  those  quick,  merci 
less,  simultaneous  designations  that  fly 
through  every  army  in  wartime  and  are  as  apt 
as  they  are  inevitable? 

She  felt  a  sudden  desire  to  "talk  it  out" 
with  Franz  von  Nettelbeck,  whose  mind,  de 
spite  his  prejudices,  was  the  most  stimulating 
she  had  ever  known.  But  although  she  heard 
of  him  often,  for  he  had  covered  himself  with 
glory,  she  had  seen  him  only  once — from  a 
window  in  Berlin  as  he  promenaded  Unter 
den  Linden ;  a  superb  and  haughty  figure,  his 
swelling  chest  covered  with  medals. 


56       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

In  Lille  she  met  Elsa,  who  had  been  in 
charge  of  a  hospital  for  a  year,  Mimi  Brandt 
and  Heloise  von  Erkel,  with  whom  she  had 
been  intimately  associated  in  Munich.  She 
found  all  three  horrified  and  appalled  at  the 
atrocious  cruelties,  the  persistent  and  need 
less  severities,  the  arrogant  and  swaggering 
attitude,  accompanied  by  countless  petty 
tyrannies,  unworthy  of  an  army  in  posses 
sion;  the  wholly  unmodern  and  dishonorable 
treatment  of  a  prostrate  and  wretched  people. 
Above  all,  the  deportations  of  the  young  girls 
of  Lille,  torn  from  their  families,  driven  in 
herds  through  the  streets,  their  faces  stamped 
with  despair  or  abject  terror,  condemned  to 
God  knew  what  horrible  fate,  had  shaken 
these  three  humane  and  thinking  women  to 
the  core. 

All  three,  while  serving  far  behind  the  lines, 
had  thought  their  German  army  an  army 
of  demi-gods,  and  all  three  were  bitterly 
ashamed  of  their  countrymen  and  disposed 
to  question  a  sovereign,  and  a  military  caste, 
that  not  only  encouraged  the  saddist  lust  of 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       57 

their  fighters  and  seemed  unable  to  spare  suf 
ficient  food  for  the  civilians,  in  spite  of  the 
great  leakage  through  neutral  countries,  but 
which  persisted  in  calling  themselves  victori 
ous  when  they  were  either  perpetually  on  the 
defensive  or  in  the  act  of  being  beaten,  de 
spite  their  irresistible  rush.  The  Somme 
Drive  had  not  begun  but  there  was  not  a 
nurse  in  Lille  that  did  not  know  the  truth 
about  Verdun. 

"And  believe  me,  as  the  Americans  say," 
remarked  Mimi  Brandt,  "when  the  German 
people  know  the  truth,  particularly  the  Ger 
man  women,  there  will  be  some  circus. " 

Mimi  had  been  far  more  of  an  active  rebel 
than  the  Niebuhr  girls,  possibly  because  her 
life-stream  was  closer  to  the  source,  patently 
to  herself  because  she  had  a  magnificent  voice 
which  needed  only  technique  to  assure  her  a 
welcome  in  any  of  the  great  opera  houses  of 
Germany.  Adroitly  persuaded  by  her  par 
ents  to  marry  when  she  was  not  quite  seven 
teen,  she  had  conceived  an  abhorrence  of  the 
rodent-visaged  young  burgess  who  had  been 


58       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

her  lot ;  not  only  was  he  personally  distasteful 
to  the  ardent  romantic  girl,  but  he  would  not 
permit  her  to  cultivate  her  voice,  much  less 
study  for  the  stage.  Her  revenge  had  been 
a  cruel  disdain,  to  which  he  had  responded 
by  lying  under  the  bed  all  night  and  howling. 
Twice  she  had  run  away,  visiting  prosperous 
and  sympathetic  relatives  in  Milwaukee,  and 
both  times  returned  at  the  passionate  solici 
tations  of  her  parents ;  not  only  outraged  in 
their  dearest  conventions  but  anxious  to  be 
rid  of  the  small  rodent  born  of  the  union. 

Her  last  return  had  been  but  a  month  before 
the  outbreak  of  the  war,  and  Hans  Brandt, 
to  his  growling  disgust,  was  promptly  swept 
off  by  the  searching  German  broom.  He  was 
as  much  in  love  with  his  wife  as  a  man  so 
meagerly  equipped  in  all  but  national  conceit 
may  be,  for  Mimi  was  a  handsome  girl  with  a 
buxom  but  graceful  figure,  and  a  laughing 
face  whose  golden  brown  eyes  sparkled  with 
the  pure  fun  of  living  when  they  were  not 
somber  with  disgust  and  rebellion. 

Gisela  had  always  looked  upon  Heloise  von 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       59 

Erkel  as  the  most  tragic  figure  in  Munich. 
In  appearance  she  had  distinction  rather  than 
beauty,  for  although  her  features  were  deli 
cate  her  complexion  and  hair  were  faded  and 
there  were  faint  lines  on  her  charming  face. 
She  was  a  blonde  of  the  French  type,  and  her 
light  figure,  although  indifferently  carried 
and  a  stranger  to  gowns,  possessed  an  inde 
finable  elegance. 

Under  heaven  knew  what  impulse  of  ro 
mantic  madness  Frau  von  Erkel,  then  Helo- 
ise  d'Oremont,  had  married  a  young  German 
officer,  and  although  both  fancied  themselves 
deeply  in  love  the  breach  began  shortly  after 
they  had  settled  to  the  routine  life  of  the 
frontier  town  where  he  was  stationed,  and  had 
widened  rapidly  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  she 
produced  six  children  as  automatically  as  the 
most  devoted  (and  detested)  hausfrau  of  her 
acquaintance.  Shortly  after  the  birth  of 
Marie,  the  breach  became  a  chasm,  for  the 
chocolate  firm,  inherited  through  her  bour- 
geoise  mother  and  the  source  of  Frau  von 
ErkePs  wealth,  failed,  and  the  haughty  Ba- 


60       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

varian  aristocrat  was  forced  to  keep  up  his 
position  in  the  army  and  maintain  his  grow 
ing  family  on  an  income,  accruing  from  choco 
late  investments,  that  should  have  been  re 
served  for  pleasure  alone. 

However,  there  was  help  for  it.  He  re 
nounced  cards  and  such  other  costly  diver 
sions  as  was  possible  without  lowering  his 
standard  as  a  gentleman  and  an  officer,  and  of 
course  the  real  privation  was  borne  by  the 
women  of  the  family.  He  even  ceased  to  rage 
at  his  wife,  for  she  merely  sat  in  her  favorite 
chair,  her  hands  folded,  and  looked  at  him 
with  her  subtle  ironic  smile. 

When  Gisela  met  them,  Frau  von  Erkel  and 
her  three  daughters  (all  in  their  late  twenties 
and  unmarried)  were  living  in  a  dingy  old 
house  in  a  respectable  quarter,  with  one  beer- 
sodden  maid  to  relieve  them  of  the  heavy 
work  and  bake  the  cake  for  the  Sunday 
"Coffee." 

Colonel  von  Erkel  and  his  three  sons  lived 
in  bachelor  quarters  and  called  upon  the 
women  of  the  family  every  Sunday  afternoon 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       61 

at  precisely  four  o'clock.  In  full  uniform, 
and  imposing  specimens  of  the  German  offi 
cer,  they  sat  stiffly  upon  the  uncomfortable 
chairs  for  about  thirty  minutes  and  then  si 
multaneously  escaped  and  were  seen  no  more 
for  a  week. 

At  first  Grisela  was  intensely  amused  at  the 
vagaries  of  the  Erkels,  but  when  she  saw  the 
four  narrow  beds  in  a  row  in  one  small  mon 
astic  room  (the  first  floor  was  let  to  lodgers  to 
pay  the  rent),  and  still  more  of  their  almost 
hopeless  contriving  to  hold  their  position  in 
Munich  society,  to  say  nothing  of  a  bare  suffi 
ciency  of  food  and  raiment,  her  sympathies, 
always  more  deep  than  quick,  were  perma 
nently  aroused.  But  they  were  confined  to 
the  girls.  Charming  and  graceful  as  the  old 
lady  was,  it  was  evident  that  if  above  the 
arrogance  of  her  German  husband  she  was 
afflicted  with  the  intense  conservatism  of  her 
own  race.  It  had  taken  Aimee,  the  oldest  of 
the  girls,  three  years  of  persistent  begging, 
nagging,  arguments,  tears,  and  threats  of 
abrupt  demise,  to  obtain  permission  to  move 


62       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

her  piano — a  present  from  relatives  who  oc 
casionally  came  to  the  rescue — a  bookcase 
and  three  chairs  up  to  the  garret  and  have  a 
room  she  could  call  her  own.  Frau  von  Er- 
kel  was  scandalized  that  a  French  girl  (she 
systematically  ignored  the  German  infusion 
in  her  daughters)  should  wish  for  hours  of 
solitude.  But  Aimee  had  the  national  gen 
ius  for  pegging  away,  and  her  mother,  who 
came  in  time  to  feel  that  one  nerve  was  being 
gnawed  with  maddening  reiteration,  finally 
succumbed ;  relieving  her  mind  daily. 

After  that  it  was  comparatively  easy,  al 
though  there  were  several  notable  engage 
ments,  for  Heloise  to  become  secretary  to 
Gisela  Boring.  She  never  dared  admit  that 
she  received  a  generous  monthly  cheque  for 
her  services,  but  Gisela  was  a  favorite  with 
the  old  lady  (always  sitting  placidly  in  her 
chair,  with  her  hands  in  her  lap,  a  faint  ironic 
smile  on  her  still  pretty  face),  and  as  her  liter 
ary  style  was  extolled  by  her  exacting  daugh 
ters  (Frau  von  Erkel  never  read  even  a  Ger 
man  newspaper,  but  subscribed  for  Le  Fi- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       63 

garo),  and  as  she  knew  Gisela  to  be  a  member 
of  her  own  class,  the  new  connection  was  har 
monious;  and  Heloise  at  last  experienced 
something  like  real  liberty  in  the  tiny  garden 
house  of  the  parterre  apartment  of  Gisela 
Doring  on  the  Koniginstrasse. 


There  is  little  time  in  the  war  zones  to  meet 
and  talk,  but  even  nurses  must  rest  and  take 
the  air,  and  during  the  month  before  the 
frightful  rush  of  wounded  after  the  British 
offensive  on  the  Somme  began,  the  four  girls, 
all  in  different  hospitals,  maneuvered  to 
obtain  leave  of  absence  at  the  same  hour, 
early  in  the  evening.  They  promenaded  the 
desolate  streets  arm  in  arm,  their  heads 
together,  relieving  their  burdened  souls. 
There  was  no  idea  of  treason  in  any  one  of 
those  rebellious  minds,  for  they  still  believed 
their  Fatherland  to  have  been  on  the  defen 
sive  from  the  first,  the  victim  of  a  conspiracy, 
and  they  knew  from  the  expression  of  the 
officers'  faces,  to  say  nothing  of  their  tern- 


64       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

pers,  that  the  danger  was  by  no  means 
past. 

But  being  women,  and  women  who  had 
thought  for  themselves  for  many  years,  they 
must  talk  it  out,  and  when  too  overcharged 
to  trust  their  comments  to  the  narrow  streets, 
they  retired  to  a  hillock  outside  the  city  which 
no  spy  could  approach  unseen.  However, 
nothing  was  farther  from  the  minds  of  the 
German  men  of  war  than  that  the  women  cogs 
of  their  supremely  organized  land  should  pre 
sume  to  criticize  methods  which  had,  to  their 
best  belief,  terrorized  the  world. 

"But  we  are  not  the  only  ones,"  said  He- 
loise  grimly,  as  they  sat  on  their  refuge  one 
dusky  evening.  "All  but  the  sheep  have  a 
word  to  say  now  and  then.  Of  course  there 
always  will  be  women  who  will  grovel  at  the 
feet  of  men  merely  because  they  are  men ;  but 
look  out  for  the  others  when  this  accursed 
war  is  over.  God!  How  I  hate  men!  To 
think  that  once  I  dreamed  and  hoped  like  the 
silly  romantic  girl  I  was  that  some  day  some 
man  would  marry  me  in  spite  of  my  poverty. 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       65 

Now  I  would  not  marry  one  of  the  Kaiser's 
sons.  Sick  or  well,  German,  English,  French, 
I  loathe  them  all  alike.  Obscene  beasts  every 
one  of  them;  but  I  hate  the  Germans  most, 
for  they  are  the  most  disgusting  invalids. 
And  I  am  a  German  girl,  too.  France  has 
never  had  any  call  for  me.  It  is  Marie  who 
would  be  all  French  if  she  could.  Poor  little 
Marie,  with  her  drab  face  and  hair,  her  pov 
erty,  her  dynamic  body,  mad  to  marry,  and 
climbing  out  of  the  window  when  mother  is 
asleep,  to  go  to  Socialists '  meetings  and 
scream  off  her  pent-up  passions.  What  a 
hideous  world!" 

She  sprang  to  her  feet  and  flung  her  arms 
above  her  head  and  glared  at  the  unrespon 
sive  stars. 

' '  0  God ! "  she  prayed.  ' '  Deliver  us !  De 
liver  us  from  war  and  deliver  us  from  men ! 
Deliver  us  from  Kings  and  deliver  us  from 
criminal  jealousies  and  ambitions  and  greeds 
that  the  innocent  millions  expiate  in  blood  and 
tears!  Deliver  us  from  cowards — "  She 
whirled  suddenly  upon  Gisela.  '  '  You — you — 


66       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

why  don't  you  lead  us  out?  You  have  more 
mind  than  any  woman  in  Germany.  You 
have  more  influence.  I  have  always  placed 
my  hopes  on  you.  But  now — now — you  are 
doing  nothing  but  nurse  disgusting  men  like 
the  rest  of  us." 

"Hush!  You  are  talking  too  loud.  And 
you  are  carrying  your  revolt  too  far.  These 
poor  deluded  men  you  nurse  are  only  to  be 
pitied,  and  if  they  merely  revolt  you,  you 
have  no  vocation — " 

"When  did  I  ever  pretend  to  have  a  voca 
tion  for  nursing?  Like  all  the  rest  I  felt  I 
must  do  my  part,  and  heaven  knows  it  is  bet 
ter  than  sitting  at  home  making  bandages  and 
watching  my  mother  slowly  starve.  If  I  had 
rolled  one  more  bandage  I  should  have  gone 
mad." 

"Well,  dear  Heloise,  as  far  as  I  am  con 
cerned,  the  time  for  women  to  battle  for  their 
rights  is  when  their  country  is  safe,  not  in 
mortal  danger.  Be  sure  that  when  this  war 
is  over — " 

She  fell  silent.    A  little  flame  had  leapt  in 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       67 

her  brain.  She  extinguished  it  hurriedly, 
but  it  burnt  the  fingers  of  her  will,  always 
enthroned  and  always  on  guard.  As  she 
stared  at  Heloise,  lovely  in  her  Bed  Cross 
uniform,  a  white  torch  against  the  dark  hori 
zon,  her  tragic  eyes  once  more  searching  the 
heavens,  it  struggled  for  life  again  and  again. 
She  loved  Heloise  and  she  felt  a  sudden  in 
clusive  love  of  her  sex,  an  overpowering  de 
sire  to  deliver  it  from  the  sadness  and  horror 
of  war ;  a  prof ounder  emotion  than  anything 
it  had  inspired  in  those  far  off  days  of  peace. 
After  all,  however  serious  she  had  believed 
herself  to  be,  it  had  been  a  game,  a  career ;  for 
in  times  of  peace  one  must  invent  the  vital 
interests  of  life,  and  one's  success  or  failure 
depends  upon  one's  powers  of  creating  and 
sustaining  the  delusion.  Only  two  things  in 
life  were  real,  love  and  war. 

Gisela,  like  many  women  of  dominating  in 
tellect  and  personality,  had  exhausted  her 
power  of  sex-love  with  her  first  unfortunate 
but  prolonged  passion,  and  although  she  had 
no  hatred  of  men,  and  indeed  liked  many 


68       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

and  craved  their  society,  she  gave  her 
real  sympathies  and  affections  to  her  women 
friends.  She  had  no  intimates,  and  this,  per 
haps,  was  one  secret  of  her  power.  A  certain 
aloofness  is  essential  in  intellectual  leader 
ship.  But  if  she  had  no  talent  for  intimacy 
she  had  much  for  friendship,  and  the  friends 
of  her  inner  circle  were  all  women,  partly 
because  there  was  no  waste  of  time  fending 
off  love-making,  partly  because  there  were 
more  interests  in  common,  consequently  a 
deeper  bond.  To-night  she  was  filled  with 
an  irresistible  pity  and  a  longing  to  set  them 
free.  But  her  hands  were  tied.  She  dared 
not  even  go  to  Great  Headquarters  and  pro 
test  against  the  terrible  fate  of  the  young 
girls  of  Lille.  She  would  have  accomplished 
no  good  and  become  an  instant  object  of  sus 
picion. 

3 

For    many    months    she    did    her    duty 
doggedly,  her  indignation  routed  by  the  dis- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       69 

quieting  fact  that  the  Germans  were  re 
treating  from  the  Somme;  inch  by  inch,  but 
still  retreating.  Once  she  might  have  been 
satisfied  with  grandiose  phrases  and  scornful 
assurances.  But  the  long  attack  on  Verdun 
had  ended  in  dark  humiliation ;  a  failure  that 
the  most  resourceful  vocabulary  was  unable 
to  translate  into  a  German  advantage,  opti 
cally  inverted. 

More  than  half  a  million  young  Germans 
had  fallen  before  Verdun,  and  for  what? 
That  France,  disdained  these  many  years  by 
the  mighty  Teutonic  Empire,  and  numerically 
inferior,  might  demonstrate  to  the  world  that 
she  was  the  greater  military  nation  of  the 
two. 

What  was  it  all  for?  What  of  the  ever- 
receding  fields  of  peace,  grown  green  and  fat 
again?  What  of  the  racing  past  dotted  with 
the  broken  headstones  of  promises  of  victory 
by  this  means  or  that? 

But  to  attempt  to  answer  historical  enigmas 
while  working  day  and  night  over  the  mangled 


70       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

victims  of  the  Somme  was  beyond  her  powers. 
It  was  not  until  she  broke  down,  and,  with 
Heloise  von  Erkel  and  Mimi  Brandt,  obtained 
leave  to  spend  a  month  at  St.  Moritz,  that  she 
found  her  answer. 


Ill 


THE  three  girls  went  to  a  little  hotel  that 
had  been  a  favorite  resort  of  Gisela 's  in 
times  of  peace  when  she  had  felt  an  impera 
tive  need  of  the  high  solitudes  and  eternal 
snows.  They  planned  a  week's  rest,  and  a 
fortnight  or  more  of  mountain  climbing,  dis 
missing  the  world  war  from  their  minds  as 
far  as  possible.  But  their  gentle  plans  were 
upset  on  the  eighth  day  after  their  arrival, 
when  at  the  end  of  an  hour's  hard  skating, 
clad  in  the  bright  sweaters  and  caps  of  old, 
Gisela  suddenly  stopped  short  and  returned 
the  hard  stare  of  two  young  women  who  had 
drawn  apart  and  were  evidently  discussing 
her.  That  they  were  Americans  Gisela  rec 
ognized  at  a  glance,  but  for  a  moment  she  saw 
them  through  a  curtain  of  fire  and  smoke  and 

71 


72       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

shrieking  shells  and  dying  groans,  so  deep  in 
the  background  of  her  memory  were  the  peo 
ple  and  events  of  her  merely  personal  life. 
One  of  the  young  women  was  very  tall,  with 
a  slim  dashing  figure,  fine  fair  hair,  keen 
cold  gray  eyes,  a  haughty  nostril  and  upper 
lip :  a  beauty  of  the  patrician  American  type. 
The  other  was  shorter  but  also  excessively 
thin,  with  dark  dancing  eyes,  a  warm  color, 
a  coquettish  nose  and  pouting  lips — which 
somehow  invoked  the  complacent  visage  of 
the  late  Herr  Graf  Niebuhr — and  a  brilliant 
smile.  In  a  moment  Gisela  recognized  Ann 
Howland  Prentiss  and  Kate  Terriss,  now 
Mrs.  Tolby.  This  American  friend  of  her 
childhood  had  married  an  American  whose 
business  kept  him  in  London,  and  her  path 
and  Gisela  7s  had  never  crossed  since  her  fin 
ishing  days  in  Berlin;  although  she  had  cor 
responded  with  Lili  for  two  or  three  years 
and  knew  the  family  history  in  vague  outline. 
Gisela  skated  directly  over  to  them  and  held 
out  her  hand  to  Kate.  "It  is  a  long  while, " 
she  said,  "but  perhaps  you  remember  me — " 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       73 

' '  Do  I  ?  Ann  will  not  believe  me — that  you 
are  Gisela  von  Niebuhr  not  Doring.  What  a 
lark  that  was  to  run  off  to  America  and  fool 
everybody!  I  wish  I  had  come  across  you. 
It  would  have  been  quite  dramatic  to  tear  off 
the  mask  of  the  governess  and  reveal  the 
junker.  I  think  it  was  too  stupid  of  you, 
Ann,  that  you  didn't  guess." 

"I  noticed  many  inconsistencies,"  said 
Mrs.  Prentiss  dryly.  She  added,  holding  out 
her  hand  with  a  charming  smile :  '  '  But  later, 
I  was  so  proud  to  have  known  Gisela  Doring, 
that  personal  curiosity  seemed  impertinent. 
How  we  have  missed  your  writings  these  last 
dreadful  years ! ' ' 

Then  all  three  began  to  talk  at  once  and 
Gisela  gathered  that  Mrs.  Tolby  had  nursed 
behind  the  British  lines  in  France  since  the 
early  days  of  the  war,  and  that  her  old  friend, 
Mrs.  Prentiss,  had  joined  her  a  few  months 
since.  Kate  asked  innumerable  questions 
about  the  other  girls,  particularly  Mariette, 
whom  she  remembered  as  a  Germanic  blonde 
of  warm  coloring,  the  coldest  eyes,  the  most 


74       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

subtly  rigid  and  ruthless  mouth  she  had  ever 
seen.  She  had  found  some  difficulty  pictur 
ing  her  as  a  Eed  Cross  nurse  and  was  not  sur 
prised  to  hear  that  she  was  in  charge  of  an 
enormous  organization  for  the  supply  of  can- 
tines.  Of  her  executive  ability  and  quick  de 
termination  there  could  be  no  doubt — as  she 
told  Ann  Prentiss  later. 

In  the  excitement  and  exhilaration  of  this 
purely  feminine  conversation — which  soon 
included  Heloise  and  Mimi — the  two  parties 
forgot  the  gory  chasm  that  divided  them. 
When  they  dropped  suddenly  at  a  chance 
word  to  the  present  that  gripped  even  these 
glittering  snow  fields  with  its  red  insatiable 
fingers,  Kate,  as  ever,  was  equal  to  the  for 
midable  moment  and  cried  out,  snapping  her 
fingers  at  the  blue  ether  so  tranquilly  aloof 
from  warring  hosts : 

"Forget  it!  For  to-day,  at  least.  What 
are  you  thinking  about  so  hard,  Ann?" 

"I'll  tell  you  later.  Let  us  go  in  and 
have  tea  and  then  skate  again.  I  noticed  how 
well  my  step  suited  Countess  Gisela's." 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       75 

Ann  Rowland,  as  the  wife  of  an  eminent 
politician,  had  long  since  cultivated  the  art 
of  mental  suppleness  and  had  learned  to  fas 
cinate  the  most  diverse  intelligences  and  egos. 
Gisela,  who  was  always  warmly  responsive  to 
personal  charm  when  not  too  obviously  in 
sincere,  enjoyed  the  hour  on  the  ice  so  ex 
clusively  devoted  to  her  by  the  distinguished 
American  and  went  to  bed  that  night  well 
content  to  bury  the  war  during  this  period  of 
necessary  rest,  grateful  for  this  fresh  cur 
rent  that  swept  her  for  the  moment  into  one 
of  those  old  backwaters  of  mere  femininity. 
Mrs.  Prentiss  had  not  related  a  single  anec 
dote  of  the  front,  nor  alluded  to  the  fact 
that  she  was  a  Bed  Cross  nurse. 

But  she  and  Kate  Terriss  sat  up  until  mid 
night.  They  were  both  women  capable  of 
seizing  those  rare  opportunities  for  service 
that  flit  past  so  many  intelligent  women  lack 
ing  initiative,  and  here  was  one  that  the  most 
clear-thinking  man  would  have  envied.  It 
was  a  piece  of  unbelievable  luck ;  Gisela  Dor- 
ing  was  not  only  here  to  their  hand  in  a  re- 


76       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

laxed  and  friendly  mood,  but  she  possessed 
charm  combined  with  a  great  intelligence  and 
an  iron  will:  she  was  far  more  the  obvious 
leader  than  they  had  inferred  from  her  work, 
and  they  guessed  something  of  the  powerful 
influence  she  must  quietly  have  obtained  over 
the  women  of  Germany.  Mrs.  Prentiss  had 
by  no  means  approved  of  her  at  an  earlier 
period,  for  she  had  shrewdly  suspected  that 
it  was  the  handsome  German  governess,  not 
the  high-born  Irm,a,  who  thwarted  her  de 
signs  upon  the  most  attractive  "foreigner" 
she  had  ever  met.  But  even  if  she  had  cher 
ished  a  grudge,  and  her  life  had  been  far  too 
happy  and  successful  for  that,  she  would 
have  been  so  profoundly  grateful  to  Gisela 
for  saving  her  from  the  anomalous  and 
wretched  position  of  other  modern  American 
women  married  to  medieval  Germans,  that 
she  felt  almost  as  great  a  desire  to  serve  her 
as  civilization  in  general. 

When  the  two  Americans  parted  for  the 
night  a  methodical  program  had  been  worked 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       77 

out,  with  every  date  at  command  and  every 
fact  in  damning  sequence.  The  result  of  this 
momentous  conference  was  that  none  of  the 
five  went  to  bed  on  the  following  night,  but 
sat  about  a  large  oval  table  in  the  common 
sitting-room  of  Mrs.  Prentiss  and  Mrs. 
Tolby,  and  wrangled  until  dawn. 


The  challenge  was  given  by  the  Americans 
and  accepted  by  the  Germans,  whose  curiosity 
had  been  carefully  pricked,  and  all  had  agreed 
that  no  matter  how  intensely  distasteful  any 
argument  might  be  they  would  not  separate 
for  at  least  eight  hours,  and  that  there  should 
be  as  little  "hot  stuff "  (quoting  Mimi 
Brandt)  as  possible. 

The  avowed  object  of  the  Americans  was 
to  prove  conclusively  that  Germany,  carry 
ing  out  a  deliberate  program,  had  precipi 
tated  the  war  in  1914,  believing  Eussia  to  be 
deliquescent,  France  riddled  with  syndical 
ism,  and  Britain  on  the  verge  of  civil  war; 


78       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

consequently  that  the  exact  moment  had  come 
for  the  swift  execution  of  her  scientifically 
wrought  plan  for  world  dominion. 

The  three  German  girls,  deep  and  many  as 
were  their  causes  for  resentment  and  dis 
gust,  had  clung  fast  to  the  belief  in  their 
country's  defensive  attitude  in  the  face  of  a 
gigantic  conspiracy,  and  were  not  pried  apart 
from  it  without  hours  of  argument,  hot  and 
resentful  on  the  one  side,  cool,  precise,  and 
logical  on  the  other.  But  those  acute  Ger 
man  brains  responded  to  the  high  intelligence 
of  their  opponents  and  to  their  manifest  hon 
esty.  Moreover,  it  was  indisputable  that 
from  the  beginning  the  Americans  had  been 
in  a  position  to  know  every  side  and  detail 
of  the  ghastly  story,  while  the  Germans,  con 
fined  within  their  own  narrow  borders  and 
taught  that  the  foreign  newspapers  were  a 
tissue  of  "strategic  lies,"  had  been  wholly 
dependent  upon  their  government  for 
"facts.11 

During  this  long  debate  Gisela  sat  at  the 
head  of  the  table,  rigid  and  watchful,  when 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       79 

she  was  not  fiercely  arguing;  Mimi  Brandt 
sprawled  in  an  easy  chair,  satirical  and 
slangy,  enveloped  in  smoke;  Heloise,  very 
pale  and  the  first  to  be  convinced,  sat  with 
her  little  hands  clenched  against  her  cheek 
bones;  Ann  Prentiss,  unshakenly  cool  quick 
and  precise;  the  more  brilliant  Mrs.  Tolby 
flashing  her  beacon  light  into  recesses  dark 
ened  these  three  years  by  systematic  lies,  but 
incapable  of  the  final  stupidity. 

That  long  argument  need  not  be  reproduced 
here.  All  the  world  has  made  up  its  mind 
about  Germany,  knows  her  far  better  than 
as  yet  she  knows  herself.  It  was  the  deliber 
ate  effort  of  the  Americans  to  force  these 
three  intelligent  Germans,  one  of  them  a 
leader  of  the  first  importance,  to  realize  that 
their  country  stood  to  the  rest  of  the  world 
for  lying,  treachery,  cruelty,  brutality,  de 
generacy,  bad  sportsmanship,  ostrich  psy 
chology;  above  all,  that  she  had  forfeited 
her  place  among  modern  and  honest  na 
tions. 

When  these  facts  had  been  hammered  in, 


80       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

Mrs.  Prentiss  moved  on  to  the  two  cardinal 
facts  for  whose  elucidation  the  rest  had  been 
a  mere  preamble:  that  the  Central  Powers 
were  beaten  and  knew  it,  but  were  determined 
to  go  on  sacrificing  the  manhood  of  the  coun 
try,  reducing  the  population  to  the  ultimate 
miseries  of  mind  and  body  rather  than  yield; 
and  that  the  only  hope  of  obtaining  mercy 
from  the  Entente  Allies  in  the  inevitable  hour 
of  surrender  was  to  dethrone  the  Hohenzol- 
lerns  and  establish  a  Eepublic.  Otherwise  as 
a  nation  they  would  cease  to  exist  and  their 
last  fate  would  be  infinitely  worse  than  their 
present.  A  German  Eepublic  would  be  wel 
comed  into  the  family  of  nations  and  receive 
a  friendly  and  helping  hand  from  every  one 
of  the  great  adversaries,  whose  prestige  and 
wealth  were  still  unshaken,  and  who  all 
desired  to  preserve  the  balance  of  power  in 
Europe.  Above  all  might  they  rely  upon  the 
United  States  of  America,  the  friendly  hints 
of  whose  President  had  been  systematically 
distorted  by  the  anxious  Pan-Germans  still 
in  the  saddle;  who  would  cheerfully  witness 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       81 

the  loss  of  every  drop  of  the  people's  life 
blood  rather  than  their  own  power. 

A  conquered  empire  that  had  been  hypno 
tized  to  the  end  by  the  monster  criminals  of 
history,  whose  word  no  man  would  ever  take 
again,  would  be  a  mere  collection  of  enslaved 
States  for  generations  to  come;  the  conquer 
ors,  having  given  them  their  choice,  would 
show  no  mercy. 

Britain  could  not  be  starved.  The  sub 
marine  war,  whatever  its  devastations,  and 
the  vast  inconveniences  it  had  caused,  was  a 
failure.  And  the  colossal  wealth  of  the 
United  States  in  money,  in  food,  in  men! 
Who  knew  her  resources  better  than  Gisela, 
who  had  lived  in  the  country  for  four  years 
and  found  it  an  absorbing  study,  who  had 
continued  to  read  American  books,  news 
papers,  and  reviews  up  to  the  outbreak  of  the 
war?  Well,  they  were  all  at  the  disposal  of 
democracy ;  and  as  the  Entente  Allies,  includ 
ing  the  United  States,  were  already  many 
times  stronger  than  Germany,  how  could  they 
fail  to  win  in  the  end,  no  matter  how  many 


82       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

millions  of  lives  on  all  sides  Germany  con 
tinued  to  shovel  into  Moloch? 

All  of  these  three  clever  German  girls  had 
been  more  or  less  prepared  to  hear  Germany 
proved  a  liar.  They  knew  from  British 
wounded  that  London  was  neither  a  fortified 
city  nor  reduced  to  ashes;  also  that  all  the 
Zeppelin  raids  on  defenseless  towns  put  to 
gether  had  been  of  less  strategical  value  to 
Germany  than  the  taking  of  one  village  in 
the  war  zone;  she  had  merely  piled  up  a 
mountain  of  hatred  and  contempt  which  must 
be  leveled  by  the  quick  repudiation  of  her 
people  if  they  would  regain  their  lost  inter 
course  with  a  triumphant  world.  Like  all 
the  other  women  who  had  nursed  near  the 
front  and  knew  the  truth,  they  translated  into 
their  own  cynical  vernacular  such  grandi 
ose  collocations  as  " Strategic  retreats7'  from 
that  of  the  Battle  of  the  Marne  to  those  which 
had  been  occurring  periodically  on  the  West 
ern  front  since  the  beginning  of  the  Somme 
offensive  of  1916. 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       83 


Glsela's  mind  was  complex  and  subtle,  but 
it  was  also  honest.  When  it  yielded  a  point, 
it  yielded  audibly.  It  was  during  the  pre 
liminary  discussion  that  she  exclaimed : 

"It  is  true — certain  things  come  back  to 
me — Mimi,  open  the  window.  The  air  is  blue 
and  we  are  all  hardy  and  can  stand  the  night 
air.  It  was  after  the  Agadir  incident  that  I 
felt  a  change.  I  say  felt  because  I  was  so 
absorbed  in  my  work  that  I  had  no  inclina 
tion  for  world  politics  and  never  discussed 
them.  Up  to  that  time  I  had  never  heard  a 
hint  of  war  for  aggression  on  the  part  of  Ger 
many.  .  .  .  While,  as  far  back  as  I  can  re 
member,  it  was  taken  for  granted  there  would 
be  a  great  war  some  day,  I  doubt  if  any  but 
the  military  party  really  believed  in  it.  We 
thought  the  time  had  passed  for  real  wars, 
that  we  were  far  too  highly  civilized.  Of 
course  I  knew  that  the  military  party  to  which 
my  father  belonged  would  have  welcomed  a 
war,  for  war  was  their  profession,  their  game, 


84       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

their  excuse  for  being,  and  I  heard  more  or 
less  talk  among  my  brothers  of  Pan-Ger 
manism;  but  still  I  imagined  that  it  was 
merely  a  defensive  Teutonic  ideal,  just  as  our 
oppressive  standing  army  was  a  necessity 
owing  to  our  geographical  position.  My 
brother  Karl  said  once — it  comes  back  to  me, 
although  I  had  quite  forgotten  it — that  it  was 
futile  for  the  military  caste  to  try  to  work 
up  a  war,  because  every  moneyed  man  in  the 
Empire — financiers,  merchants,  manufactur 
ers,  all  the  rest — never  would  hear  of  it. 
The  country  was  too  prosperous.  Our  wealth 
was  growing  at  a  pace  which  even  the  United 
States  could  not  rival,  and  poverty  was  prac 
tically  eliminated.  That  is  the  reason  no 
hint  made  any  impression  on  me.  It  seemed 
to  me  that  we  were  the  most  fortunate  and 
advanced  nation  in  Europe  and  had  only  to 
wait  for  our  kultur  to  pervade  the  earth. 

"But — after  Agadir — I  seem  to  look  back 
upon  a  slowly  rising  tide,  muttering,  sullen, 
determined — even  in  Bavaria  the  old  seren 
ity,  the  settled  feeling,  was  gone — war  was 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       85 

discussed  as  a  possibility  less  casually  than 
of  old—  " 

"I  recall  a  good  deal  more  than  that/' 
interrupted  Mimi.  "Bemember  that  I  was 
the  daughter  of  a  manufacturer,  and  the  wife, 
so-called,  of  a  merchant.  They  were  always 
grinding  their  teeth — and  from  about  the  time 
you  speak  of — over  the  wrongs  of  Germany. 
What  the  wrongs  were  I  never  could  make 
out,  and  I  am  bound  to  say  I  did  not  listen 
very  attentively,  being  absorbed  in  my  own — 
but  it  would  seem  that  Germany  being  the 
greatest  country  in  the  world  was  somehow 
not  being  permitted  to  lot  the  rest  of  the 
world  find  it  out— " 

"It  is  all  simple  enough,  now  that  I  have 
the  key.  Germany  tried  to  bully  France,  and 
not  only  was  France  anxious  to  avoid  war  but 
Britain  showed  her  teeth.  Germany  was  not 
then  prepared  to  fight  the  world  and  was 
forced  to  compromise.  France  gave  her  a 
slice  of  the  Kongo  in  exchange  for  Germany's 
consent  to  a  French  Protectorate  in  Morocco. 
Of  course — after  that  it  must  have  been  evi- 


86       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

dent  to  all  the  business  brains  of  Germany 
that  however  great  and  prosperous  the 
Empire  might  be  she  was  not  strong  enough 
to  dictate  to  Europe ;  nor  presume  to  demand 
any  more  of  the  great  prizes  than  she  had 
already. 

"In  other  words,  she  was  shown  her  place. 
It  was  also  more  than  possible  that  her 
aggressive  prosperity  might  one  of  these  days 
excite  the  apprehension  of  Great  Britain,  who 
would  then  show  more  than  her  teeth.  Grad 
ually  the  idea  must  have  permeated,  taken 
possession  of  the  minds  of  men  who  had  vast 
fortunes  to  increase  or  lose,  that  sooner  or 
later  they  must  fight  for  what  they  had  and 
that  it  were  better  perhaps  to  strike  first,  at 
a  moment  they  might  choose  themselves — 
however  little  they  might  sympathize  with 
the  ambitions  of  the  Pan-German  Party  for 
supreme  power  in  Europe — " 

"Perhaps  nothing, "  said  Mimi.  "They 
made  up  their  minds  to  do  it  and  they  did 
it.  It  is  as  plain  as  daylight.  I'd  forgive 
them,  too,  if  they'd  won  in  six  months,  as 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       87 

they  were  so  sure  they  would.  What  I  don't 
forgive  them  for  is  that  they  have  proved 
themselves  the  most  criminal  fools  unhung. 
I'm  glad  that  I  am  a  Bavarian,  and  that  Prus 
sia,  whom  we  have  always  so  hated  and  de 
spised  that  we  have  never  turned  the  lions 
about  on  the  Siegesthor,  should  be  the  prime 
offenders,  humiliating  as  it  may  be  that  we 
fell  for  their  lies  and  got  into  this  rotten 
mess.  But  go  ahead,  Mrs.  Prentiss.  What's 
your  next?  Gee,  but  you  can  hand  it  out. 
You  must  have  kept  tab  since  August  1st, 
1914." 

"I  took  merely  an  intelligent  American 
woman's  interest,"  said  Mrs.  Prentiss,  mo 
mentarily  haughty.  "And  I  spent  the  first 
two  years  and  a  half  in  Washington,  where  I 
often  knew  more  than  the  newspapers ;  at  all 
events  where  I  was  constantly  in  the  soci 
ety  of  thinking  men.  Also  honest  men,  for 
war  was  the  last  thing  we  wanted,  until  our 
honor  became  too  deeply  involved  to  permit 
us  to  hold  aloof  and  fatten  on  your  misery 
any  longer.  Also,  to  be  frank,  our  interests. ' ' 


88       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

The  fact  which  impressed  the  Germans  and 
reduced  all  that  had  gone  before  to  a  heated 
academic  discussion,  was  that  Germany  was 
beaten,  and  that  the  United  States  embargo 
would  reduce  the  Central  Empires  to  actual 
starvation,  not  merely  devitalizing  subnour- 
ishment;  combined  with  their  own  certainty 
that  the  Teutonic  Powers  would  go  on  fight 
ing,  under  the  lash  of  Prussia,  sacrificing 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  loyal  German  and 
Austrian  boys,  plunge  countless  more  fam 
ilies  into  hopeless  grief,  doom  all  the  children 
in  the  land  to  sheer  hunger  and  tuberculo 
sis. 

Starvation!  That  was  the  inevitable  fate 
of  Germany  if  she  prolonged  the  war.  And 
for  what?  Prostration,  physical,  financial, 
economic.  To  suffer  for  a  generation,  at 
least,  the  fate  of  the  outlaw,  mangy  dogs 
nosing  among  rotten  bones,  kicked  by  the 
victors  whenever  they  stood  on  their  hind  legs 
and  whined  for  mercy. 

And  the  Americans  were  prepared  to  pour 
into  France  and  Britain  billions  of  dollars 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       89 

and  millions  of  men  and  incalculable  tons  of 
food  and  ammunition. 


The  two  Americans  had  a  deeper  purpose 
in  forcing  this  long  argument  than  hammer 
ing  the  truth  into  those  intelligent  but  Prus 
sianized  brains.  As  the  hours  wore  toward 
the  dawn  they  observed  with  satisfaction  that 
Gisela's  face  grew  whiter  and  grimmer,  until 
finally  it  set  itself  in  rigid  lines.  Her  mouth 
was  hard,  her  eyes  expanded  as  if  they  saw 
far  beyond  the  crystal  mountains  glittering 
before  the  open  windows.  Her  mass  of  dark 
hair  had  fallen,  and  Mrs.  Tolby  whispered  to 
Mrs.  Prentiss  that  she  looked  like  the  Medusa 
in  the  Glyptothek  in  Munich,  lovely  but  re 
lentless. 

Gisela  was  no  longer  the  radiant  and 
voluptuous  beauty  who  had  incurred  the 
secret  wrath  of  Ann  Howland  at  Bar  Harbor. 
These  years  of  war,  during  which  she  had 
known  hard  physical  labor  and  often  insuffi 
cient  nourishment,  more  rarely  still  a  full 


90       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

night's  sleep,  had  taken  her  lovely  curves  of 
cheek  and  form,  her  brilliant  color.  She  was 
thin,  almost  gaunt;  but  the  dissolving  of  the 
flesh  had  given  her  intellect,  her  force  of 
character,  her  aspiring  spirit,  their  first  real 
opportunity  to  stamp  her  features.  She 
would  always  be  handsome,  with  her  long 
dark  eyes  and  masses  of  soft  dark  hair,  her 
noble  outlines ;  and  her  womanly  sympathies 
had  preserved  their  balance  between  a  de 
vitalizing  horror  on  the  one  hand  and  callous 
ness  on  the  other;  but  it  was  a  spiritualized 
beauty,  devoid  of  that  appeal  to  sex  of  which 
she  had  been,  even  after  she  had  buried  the 
memory  of  Franz  von  Nettelbeck  and  all 
desire  for  love,  femininely  tenacious,  how 
ever  disdainful. 

Mimi  was  the  first  to  speak  after  a  long  in 
terval  of  silence. 

"You've  got  me,  all  right.  IVe  been  dig 
ging  up  a  few  more  things.  We're  up 
against  it  for  keeps,  and  it's  get  out  or  starve 
out.  I've  a  notion  to  sneak  off  to  my  re- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       91 

lations  in  Milwaukee.  Mrs.  Prentiss,  I'll  go 
as  your  maid — " 

' '  You  '11  do  nothing  of  the  sort ! ' '  Gisela  's 
voice  cut  through  the  ripples  of  laughter 
which  always  greeted  Mimi's  redundant 
slang.  "You'll  go  back  to  Germany  with  me 
and  do  your  part  in  putting  an  end  to  this 
war!"  All  but  Heloise  half  arose,  but  she 
sat  staring  at  that  hard  drawn  face  as  if  in 
telepathic  communication. 

"Can  you  do  anything — really?"  gasped 
Kate.  "We  have  been  hoping  for  a  revo 
lution,  but  had  given  up  the  idea — until  after 
the  war.  Your  Socialists  either  eat  out  of 
the  Kaiser's  hand  or  sputter  and  fizzle  out. 
And  all  your  able-bodied  men  are  at  the 
front—" 

"But  not  the  women." 

"The  what?" 

"You  have  both  lived  in  Germany.  You 
know  that  German  women  are  big  strong 
creatures — what  you  call  husky.  They  are 
stronger  than  many  of  the  men  because  they 


92       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

have  led  more  decent  lives.  The  men  at  the 
front  are  hopeless  as  revolutionary  material 
— at  present.  They  are  hypnotized.  They 
have  been  taught  not  to  think.  They  are  sick 
of  the  war,  they  suffer  when  they  come  home 
and  see  their  women  reduced  to  shadows,  or 
go  to  the  cemeteries  to  visit  the  graves  of 
their  little  brothers  and  sisters ;  but  the  teach 
ing  of  a  lifetime:  the  omnipotence  of  their 
sovereigns,  whom  they  innocently  believe  to 
rule  by  divine  right,  sends  them  back  submis 
sive,  patient,  sad.  I  know  what  you  had  in 
mind  when  you  brought  us  here  to  convince 
us  that  our  country  was  not  only  responsi 
ble  for  the  war,  but  beaten.  You  hoped  we 
would  somehow  bring  about  the  assassination 
of  the  Kaiser  and  the  Crown  Prince  Euprecht 
of  Bavaria — all  the  great  generals.  Is  it  not 
so?  That  would,  assuredly,  break  down  the 
morale  of  the  army,  give  it  a  more  smashing 
blow  than  any  it  has  received  even  on  the 
Western  front.  Well,  it  cannot  be  done. 
Even  I  could  not  obtain  a  pass  into  Great 
Headquarters.  You  might  as  well  expect  a 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       93 

British  soldier  to  be  permitted  to  saunter 
over  from  his  lines  and  make  sketches  of  the 
German  trenches.  Those  men  guard  them 
selves — day  and  night,  at  every  point — as  if 
haunted  with  the  fear  of  assassination.  Per 
haps  they  are.  And  remember  that  the  down 
fall  of  CaBsarism  means  the  downfall  not  only 
of  junkerism  but  of  all  the  other  kings  and 
Grand  Dukes — who  are  powerful  and  wealthy 
in  their  own  domains.  They  have  no  doubt 
cursed  Prussia  daily  since  September,  1914, 
but  now  they  all  sink  or  swim  together. 
They  will  force  Germany  to  die  a  thousand 
deaths  in  the  hope  of  a  miracle  that  will  save 
a  class  to  which  the  rest  of  poor  Germany  is 
a  breeding-ground  for  their  mighty  armies. 
I  belong  to  that  class.  One  of  my  brothers  is 
on  the  staff  of  the  Crown  Prince  of  Prussia. 
Take  my  word  for  it:  the  solution  of  Ger 
many's  deliverance  is  not  to  be  found  in  the 
simple  antidote  of  political  assassination,  for 
only  men  bound  up  in  the  success  of  the  Ger 
man  arms,  or  their  terrorized  creatures  of  our 
own  sex,  are  near  enough  to  throw  the  bomb." 


94       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

"It  was  rather  a  commonplace  idea,"  said 
Kate,  gracefully,  "but  what  can  you  do?" 

"Quite  aside  from  the  women  of  the  indus 
trial  and  lower  classes  generally,  who  have 
given  the  municipalities  serious  trouble  with 
their  food  riots — far  more  than  you  know 
about — the.  German  women  altogether  are 
restless  and  dissatisfied.  They  were  prom 
ised  a  short  and  triumphant  war.  They  are 
daily  more  skeptical  of  promises.  They  have 
suffered  death  in  life.  All  that  early  exal 
tation — exhilaration — has  gone  long  since. 
They  shut  their  teeth  and  endure  because  they 
still  believe  the  cunning  official  lies — that 
Britain  must  be  starved  by  the  submersi- 
bles,  that  France's  man  power  is  nearly  ex 
hausted,  that  the  United  States  cannot  pre 
pare  an  army  in  less  than  two  years  and 
needs  all  her  trained  men  at  home  to  quell 
the  riots  of  the  masses  who  disapprove  of  the 
war.  They  are  taught  to  believe  that  ulti 
mate  victory  for  Germany  is  inevitable — that 
it  is  merely  a  question  of  months. 

* '  But — convince  them  that  Germany  cannot 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       95 

win,  that  their  own  conquest  is  inevitable 
after  three  or  four  more  years  of  horror  and 
torment  and  personal  despair,  turn  their 
blind  hatred  of  England  and  America  upon 
their  own  conscienceless  rulers — " 

"Jimminy!"  cried  Mimi.  "That's  the 
dope.  Pound  it  into  them  that  the  Enemy 
Allies  will  give  them  a  square  deal  as  a  Ee- 
public  and  put  them  under  the  steam-roller 
with  the  Hohenzollerns  if  they  stand  pat,  and 
you'll  get  them.  No  more  hungry  and  tuber 
cular  babies,  no  more  babies  born  with  a 
cuticle  short  in  theirs.  They'd  rise  as  one 
man — I  mean — damn  the  men! — as  one 
woman." 

Heloise  left  her  seat  like  a  whirlwind  and 
flung  herself  at  Gisela's  feet.  Her  face  was 
flaming  white.  She  looked  like  a  sibyl.  "I 
knew  it  would  be  you !"  she  cried  in  her  sweet 
bell-like  tones.  "I  have  had  visions  of  you 
leading  us  out  of  this  awful  war.  You  have 
only  to  talk  to  the  women — your  word  was 
gospel  to  them  before  the  war — they  too  will 
have  the  vision  and  they  will  make  it  fact/' 


96       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

"Yes — but — "  interrupted  the  practical 
Ann.  "How  shall  you  go  to  work?  It  is  a 
stupendous  idea.  But  you  never  could  keep 
such  a  propaganda  movement  a  secret.  Some 
one  would  be  sure  to  betray  you.  German 
women  are  perfect  fools  about  men." 

"No  longer.  Nor  were  they  for  several 
years  before  the  war  as  subservient  (in 
wardly)  to  men  as  they  had  been  in  the  past. 
Far  from  it.  And  now !  They  have  suffered 
too  much  at  the  hands  of  men.  They  have  no 
illusions  left.  Love  and  marriage  are  ghastly 
caricatures  to  women  who  have  lived  in  a 
time  when  men  are  slaughtered  like  pigs  in 
massed  formation ;  when  their  little  boys  are 
driven  to  war;  when  young  girls — and  wid 
ows! — are  forced  to  bring  more  males  into 
the  world  with  the  sanction  of  neither  love 
nor  marriage;  when  those  too  young  for  the 
trench  or  the  casual  bed  wail  incessantly  for 
bread.  Oh,  no!  The  German  man's  day  of 
any  but  legal  dominion  is  over.  Of  course 
there  is  always  the  danger  of  spies  and  trai 
tors,  but—  " 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       97 

"The  wall  for  you  at  sunrise  if  you  get 
caught, ' '  cried  Mimi,  with  another  subsidence 
of  enthusiasm. 

"If  that  happen  to  be  my  destiny.  Can 
any  one  experience  what  we  have  done  during 
these  three  years  and  not  be  as  fatalistic  as 
the  men  in  the  trenches!  I'd  rather  die  be 
fore  a  firing  squad  after  an  attempt  to  save 
my  wretched  country  than  live  to  see  it  set 
back  a  hundred  years.  But  I  refuse  to  be 
lieve  that  I  shall  be  betrayed  or  that  I  shall 
fail.  That  I  believe  to  be  my  destiny.  For  a 
long  time  the  idea  has  been  fumbling  in 
the  back  of  my  mind,  but  it  lacked  the  cur 
rent  which  would  switch  it  into  my  con 
sciousness.  You  two  have  supplied  the  cur 
rent.  " 

Kate  threw  back  her  head  and  gave  her 
merry,  ringing  laugh.  "What  delicious 
irony!  Germany  defeated  by  its  women! 
When  I  think  of  your  august  papa,  dear  Gis- 
ela!  That  kulturistically  typical,  that  naive 
yet  Jovian  symbol  of  all  the  arrogance  and 
conceit,  the  simple  creed  of  Kaiserism  iiber 


98       THE  WHITE  MORNING 

alles,  and  will-to-rule,  that  hurled  this  colos 
sus  on  the  back  of  Europe — " 

"  Quite  so.  You  of  all  present  know  that 
I  received  the  proper  training  for  the  part  I 
am  about  to  play.  If  all  goes  well  we  women 
will  erect  a  tablet  to  my  father's  memory 
in  the  cathedral  at  Berlin. "  She  leaned 
down  and  patted  the  rapt  face  of  Heloise, 
then  scowled  at  Mimi.  ' '  May  I  not  'count  on 
you  ?  * '  she  asked  sternly. 

"May  you?  Well,  say,  what  are  you  tak 
ing  me  for?  I'm  more  afraid  of  you  than  I 
am  of  a  firing  squad,  and  anyhow  I  seem  to 
know  we'll  win  out.  I'm  going  to  carry  a 
club  in  case  I  mix  up  with  Hans.  But  what's 
your  plan?" 

"This  is  neither  the  time  nor  place  to  work 
out  a  campaign.  The  first  move  will  be  to 
train  lieutenants  in  every  State  in  Ger 
many — women  whom  we  know  either  per 
sonally  or  through  correspondence.  You, 
Heloise,  will  return  to  Municli  at  once  and 
make  out  the  lists.  We  shall  have  no  diffi 
culty  obtaining  permits  to  travel  all  over  the 


THE  WHITE  MORNING       99 

Empire,  for  it  will  never  enter  the  insanely 
stupid  official  head  to  doubt  whatever  excuse 
we  may  choose  to  give.  Not  only  are  we  Ger 
man  women  and  therefore  sheep,  but  we  are 
Eed  Cross  nurses.  .  .  .  And  remember  that 
nearly  all  the  men  who  are  still  in  the  fac 
tories  are  Socialists — and  that  women  swarm 
in  all  of  those  factories — " 

" Marie!"  cried  Heloise.  "How  she  will 
work !  She  has  the  confidence  of  the  Socialist 
party — both  wings — wherever  she  is  known; 
and  she  can  talk — like  a  torrent  of  liquid 
fire," 

"And  the  next  chapter ?"  asked  Mrs.  Pren- 
tiss  curiously.  "You  led  the  German  women 
in  thought  for  five  years.  Shall  you  have  a 
"Woman's  Eepublic,  with  you  as  President?" 

"Certainly  not.  It  is  not  in  the  German 
women — not  yet — to  crave  the  grinding  cares 
of  public  life.  We  shall  make  the  men  do  the 
work,  and  we  will  live  for  the  first  time.  De 
livered  from  Csesarism  and  junkerism  and 
with  the  advanced  men  of  Germany  at  the 
head  of  a  Eepublic,  I  should  feel  too  secure 


100     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

of  Germany's  future  to  demand  any  of  the 
ugly  duties  of  government — although  the 
women  will  speak  through  the  men.  Their 
day  of  silence  and  submission  is  forever 
passed — " 

"Same  here,"  remarked  Mimi,  stretching 
and  yawning.  " Let's  go  to  bed.  I  have 
smoked  fifty-three  cigarettes  and  my  voice 
is  ruined.  Nevertheless  I  shall  be  a  great 
prima  donna,  and  you,  Gisela,  can  chuck 
propaganda,  and  write  romance.  The  world 
will  devour  it  after  these  years  of  undiluted 
realism  written  in  red  ink  on  a  black  page. 
Look  at  the  sun  trying  to  climb  out  of  that 
mist  and  give  us  his  blessing." 

"I  shall  go  for  a  walk,"  said  Gisela,  "and 
I  shall  go  alone. ' ' 


IV 


MES.  PEENTISS  and  Mrs.  Tolby  placed 
a  large  sum  of  money  to  Gisela's 
account  in  a  Swiss  bank,  and  this  she  trans 
ferred  to  the  Bayerischer  Vereinsbank  in 
Munich.  As  she  had  collected  large  sums  for 
war  relief,  and  was  on  the  board  of  nine  war 
charities,  no  suspicion' was  excited.  She  had 
given  to  these  organizations  the  greater  part 
of  the  small  fortune  she  had  made  from  her 
play  and  other  writings,  not  absorbed  by  taxa 
tion  and  bond  subscriptions,  but  there  were 
many  wealthy  women,  hungry,  sad,  appre 
hensive  that  peace  would  find  them  paupers, 
upon  whom  she  could  depend  to  give  liberally. 
There  was  to  be  no  printed  matter  nor 
correspondence,  but  an  army  of  lieutenants, 

who,  starting  from  certain  centers,  would 
101 


J02     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

augment  their  numbers  from  Gisela's  long 
list  of  correspondents,  until  it  would  be  pos 
sible  to  sound  personally  all  the  women  of  a 
district  whom  it  was  thought  wise  to  trust. 

Gisela  returned  to  Germany  as  soon  as  she 
had  worked  out  the  details  of  her  campaign 
and  received  the  enthusiastic  donation  of  her 
American  friends.  Mimi  Brandt,  Marie  von 
Erkel  (who  looked  like  an  ecstatic  fury  of  the 
French  Revolution  when  she  realized  that  at 
last  she  had  a  role  to  play  in  life  that  would 
not  only  vent  her  consuming  energies  and 
ambition,  but  enable  her  to  assist  in  the  down 
fall  of  a  race  of  men  whom  she  hated,  both  for 
their  tyranny  and  indifference  to  brains  with 
out  beauty,  with  all  the  diverted  passion  of 
her  nature),  Aimee  von  Erkel,  who  was  per 
sistent,  incisive,  and  so  alarmed  at  the  pros 
pect  of  all  the  men  in  the  world  being  killed, 
that  she  would  have  hastened  peace  on  any 
terms;  Princess  Starnwb'rth,  a  Socialist  and 
idealist,  a  brilliant  and  persuasive  speaker, 
to  whom  war  was  the  ultimate  horror;  Jo 
hanna  Stuck,  whose  revolt  had  been  deep  and 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     103 

bitter  long  before  the  war  and  who  was  one  of 
Gisela's  fervent  disciples  and  aides — these 
and  six  others  were  sent  on  one  pretense  or 
another  into  the  various  States  of  Germany 
— the  kingdoms,  principalities,  grand  duchies, 
duchies,  and  "free  towns " — to  bear  Gisela's 
personal  message  and  select  the  proper  lead 
ers. 

Gisela  went  at  once  to  Berlin  and  had  a 
long  interview  with  Mariette,  who  was  ripe 
for  revolution :  her  lover  had  been  killed  and 
her  husband  had  not.  Mariette  was  not  of 
the  type  that  sorrow  and  loss  ennoble.  She 
was  still  a  handsome  woman,  particularly  in 
her  uniform,  but  the  pink  and  white  cheeks 
that  once  had  covered  her  harsh  bones  were 
sunken  and  sallow.  Her  mouth  was  like  a 
narrow  bar  of  iron.  Her  eyes  were  half 
closed  as  if  to  hide  the  cold  and  deadly  flame 
that  never  flickered;  even  her  nostrils  were 
rigid.  All  her  hard  and  sensual  nature, 
devoid  of  tenderness,  but  dissolved  with  senti 
mentality  while  the  man  who  had  conquered 
her  had  lived,  she  had  centered  on  her  lover, 


104     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

and  with  his  death  she  was  a  tool  to  Gisela's 
hand  to  wreak  vengeance  upon  the  powers 
that  had  sent  him  out  of  the  world. 

" Leave  it  to  me/'  she  said  grimly. 
* '  There  are  not  only  the  women  in  the  towns 
where  I  have  been  stationed  these  many 
years,  but,  here  in  Berlin,  the  wives  of  men 
whose  money  is  financing  this  war :  men  who 
permitted  the  war  because  they  hoped  for 
infinite  riches  but  are  now  terrified  that  they 
will  not  have  a  pfennig  if  the  war  goes  on 
much  longer.  They  dare  not  rebel,  for  they 
would  be  shot,  and  their  fortunes  be  confis 
cated  :  their  banks,  industries,  shops,  run  by 
cowed  minor  officials.  But  the  women — I  can 
count  on  many  of  them.  Even  if  their  hus 
bands  suspected,  they  would  wink  at  it,  will 
ing  that  the  women  should  take  the  risk  and 
they  reap  the  benefit.  God !  How  they  hate 
the  war — every  woman  I  know.  Leave  this 
part  of  Germany  to  me,  and  be  prepared  for 
Schrecklichkeit.  There  will  be  no  mercy,  no 
politics,  in  this  revolution — merely  one  end  in 
view.  The  Eussians  are  babies  but  we  are 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     105 

not.  *  Huns'  shall  cease  to  be  a  term  of 
opprobrium,  for  female  Huns  will  end  the 
war. ' ' 

Countess  Niebuhr,  whose  love  of  intrigue 
had  not  diminished  with  the  years,  and  who 
had  known  more  of  the  Pan-Germanic  mind 
than  her  naive  husband  had  guessed — who, 
moreover,  had  had  a  long  and  enlightening  in 
terview  with  one  of  her  sons  but  a  month 
before — undertook  to  win  over  many  women 
of  her  own  class  who  had  suffered  death  and 
disillusion. 

Elsa's  transfer  to  a  hospital  in  Saxony  was 
skilfully  managed ;  and  Lili  went  on  a  concert 
tour  for  the  Bed  Cross.  It  was  not  worth 
while  to  campaign  in  Austria;  the  moment 
Germany  was  helpless  she  would  collapse  au 
tomatically. 

In  the  course  of  a  month  the  secret  prop 
aganda  was  moving  with  the  invisible,  sin 
ister,  irresistible  suction  of  an  undertow. 
The  immense  army  of  women  who  did  Gis- 
ela's  work  proved  themselves  true  Germans, 
logical  products  of  generations  of  discipline, 


106     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

concentration,  secretiveness,  and  a  thorough 
ness,  even  in  trifling  details,  as  implacable  as 
it  was  automatic.  They  made  few  mistakes. 
When  they  discovered — and  their  spy  service 
was  also  Teutonic — that  they  had  confided  in 
some  girl  or  woman  whose  inherent  weakness 
or  venality  threatened  betrayal,  she  dis 
appeared  immediately  and  for  ever. 

Gisela,  obtaining  a  commission  to  inspect 
the  leading  hospitals  "back  of  the  front, " 
visited  each  of  the  states  in  turn  and  ad 
dressed  thousands  of  women  in  groups  of  two 
or  three  hundred,  gathered  under  the  eyes  of 
the  police  in  the  name  of  one  of  the  many  war 
charities  in  which  all  women  were  engaged. 
The  lieutenants  prepared  these  women,  and 
Gisela  inspired,  crystallized,  cohered.  The 
timid  she  shamed  with  the  example  of  the 
Russian  women  (and  German  women  despise 
all  other  women) ;  the  desperate  she  had  little 
difficulty  in  convincing  that  there  was  but  one 
egress  from  their  insupportable  agony.  Vic 
tory  under  her  leadership  if  they  stood  firm, 
was  inevitable. 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     107 

She  had  the  gift  of  a  fiery  torrent  of  speech, 
a  clear  steady  eye,  even  when  it  flashed  and 
blazed,  and  a  warm  and  irresistible  magnet 
ism  that  convinced  the  individual  as  well  as 
the  mass  that  she  had  but  one  object,  the  lib 
eration  of  the  miserable  women  of  her  coun 
try,  their  deliverance  from  further  sorrow; 
and  that  she  was  wholly  lacking  in  personal 
ambition. 

These  women  had  known  the  gnawing  sen 
sation  of  unappeased  appetite  for  two  years. 
They  had  seen  old  men  and  women,  sometimes 
their  own,  fall  in  the  streets  dead  or  dying, 
because  they  no  longer  had  the  reserves  of 
men  and  women  in  their  youth  or  prime. 
They  had  seen  men  blow  out  their  brains  in 
front  of  municipal  buildings,  cursing  the 
Emperor,  the  military  autocracy,  and  even 
the  Government,  always  at  odds  with  the  war 
lords.  They  knew  of  suicides  and  child  mur 
der  by  despairing  mothers  that  they  hardly 
whispered  to  one  another.  And  all  the  chil 
dren  were  emaciated  and  wailed  continually 
for  food,  sleeping  little,  playing  less,  stunted 


108     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

in  their  growth  and  threatened  with  disease ; 
if  the  war  went  on  another  year  they  would 
join  the  little  Polish  victims  on  their  shadowy 
playground.  .  .  .  They  feared  for  their  daugh 
ters  at  home  even  as  they  feared  for  their 
young  sons  in  the  trenches.  .  .  .  Barring  a 
revolution,  the  war  might  last  for  years  .  .  . 
years.  .  .  .  " Peace  Proposals"  irritated  what 
little  humor  they  had  left  to  ghastly  obscene 
joking.  .  .  .  "Victories"  left  them  as  cold  as 
the  mid-winter  bed.  .  .  .  The  Hohenzollerns, 
the  other  kings  and  princes,  the  cast-iron 
junkers,  would  cling  fast  to  their  own  until 
the  Enemy  Allies'  day  of  judgment,  for  sur 
render  meant  their  quicker  extermination; 
now,  at  least,  they  were  still  in  the  saddle, 
able  to  cheer  their  haunted  egos  with  the 
Wine  of  Lies. 

It  was  the  Hohenzollerns  and  defeat,  or  a 
Eepublic  and  easy  terms  from  the  victors  who 
would  welcome  a  sound  de-brutalized  Ger 
many,  jealous  of  her  lost  honor, 'into  the  fam 
ily  of  nations.  The  arguments  were  brief  and 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     109 

simple.  Gisela  would  have  won  over  women 
far  less  despairing  than  these.  And  the  fact 
that  she  had  spent  four  years  in  America 
studying  its  institutions  and  resources,  con 
vinced  the  most  susceptible  to  official  lies  that 
the  United  States  could  pour  money,  men, 
ammunition,  munitions  and  food  into  Europe 
for  countless  years ;  and  that  the  agitations  of 
her  pacifists,  syndicalists,  German  agents, 
and  bribe-takers  were  but  picturesque  ripples 
on  the  surface  of  a  nation  covering  over  three 
million  five  hundred  thousand  square  miles 
and  embracing  more  than  one  hundred  million 
people. 

And  with  all  the  insidious  subtlety  of  her 
supple  mind  she  changed  the  prevailing 
hatred  of  President  Wilson  into  a  profound 
and  pathetic  confidence.  She  had  long  since 
made  them  envy  and  admire  the  women  of 
America,  and  if  these  fortunate  beings  had 
enthusiastically  reflected  him  and  were  now 
giving  his  policy  as  persistent  and  effective 
assistance  as  the  men,  it  was  for  the  desperate 


110     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

women  of  Germany  to  believe  in  his  promises 
of  deliverance.  Above  all  lie  had  now  the 
approval  of  their  own  Gisela  Doring. 

It  was  the  mothers  of  Germany,  balked, 
potential,  or  veritable,  who  were  ready  to 
rise  and  rescue  what  was  left  of  the  youth 
of  Germany.  If  victory  for  the  German  arms 
were  hopeless  they  would  risk  their  own  lives 
to  force  a  peace  that  would  leave  them  with 
the  rags  of  their  old  honor  and  prosperity, 
that  would  give  them  revenge  upon  the  men 
who  had,  for  their  own  criminal  ambitions — 
ambitions  which  belonged  to  the  Middle  Ages 
— doomed  them  to  lifelong  sorrow;  and  that 
would  save  the  lives  of  their  children — save 
husbands  also  for  a  few  of  these  stern  and 
weary  girls.  Even  in  the  Ehine  Valley, 
where  the  greater  number  of  the  munition 
and  ammunition  factories  were  grouped, 
there  were  incessant  meetings,  among  the 
night  and  day  shifts,  of  the  thousands  of 
women  employed  there,  and  Gisela  herself 
addressed  each  of  them. 


GISELA,  who  had  been  staring  across  the 
Koniginstrasse  into  the  heavy  branches 
that  hung  over  the  wall  of  the  park,  her  men 
tal  vision  too  actively  raking  the  past  to 
spare  a  beam  for  the  familiar  picture,  sud 
denly  switched  her  searchlight  away  from 
those  milestones  in  her  historic  progress  and 
concentrated  it  upon  a  suspicious  shadow 
opposite.  Surely  it  had  moved,  and  there 
was  not  a  breath  of  wind.  The  night  was 
mild  and  still. 

She  did  not  move  a  muscle  but  narrowed 
her  gaze  until  it  detached  the  figure  of  a  man 
from  the  dark  background  of  wall  and  trees. 
Always  apprehensive  of  spies,  although  the 
Gott  commandeered  by  the  Kaiser  seemed  to 

have  adjusted  blinders  to  eyes  strained  west, 
111 


112     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

east,  and  south,  she  leapt  to  the  conclusion 
that  she  was  under  surveillance  at  last,  and 
her  heart  beat  thickly.  She  who  had  be 
lieved  that  the  long  strain,  the  constant  dan 
ger,  the  incessant  demand  for  resource  and 
ever  more  resource,  had  transformed  her 
nerves  to  pure  steel,  realized  angrily  that  on 
this  last  night  when  she  had  permitted  her 
self  an  hour's  idle  retrospect  before  com 
manding  sleep,  her  nerves  more  nearly  re 
sembled  the  strings  of  a  violin. 

Her  apartment  was  on  the  ground  floor. 
She  stood  up,  revealing  herself  disdainfully 
in  the  moonlight  that  now  lay  full  on  her  win 
dow,  then  went  out  quickly  into  the  vestibule 
and  unlocked  the  house  door.  Her  only  fear 
was  that  the  man  would  have  gone,  but  if  he 
were  still  there  she  was  determined  to  walk 
boldly  over  to  his  skulking-place  and  pretend 
she  believed  him  to  be  a  burglar  or  a  foreign 
spy.  In  these  days  she  carried  a  small  pistol 
and  a  dagger. 

When  she  had  stepped  out  on  the  pavement 
she  glanced  quickly  up  and  down  the  street. 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     113 

Not  even  a  polizeidiener  was  in  sight,  for  this 
aristocratic  quarter  was,  in  peace  and  war, 
the  quietest  part  of  an  always  orderly  town. 
It  was  evident  that  the  man  spied  alone. 

Holding  her  head  very  high,  she  started 
across  the  street;  but  she  had  not  taken  three 
steps  when  the  shadow  detached  itself  and 
walked  rapidly  out  into  the  moonlight.  She 
gave  a  sharp  cry  and  shrank  back.  It  was 
Franz  von  Nettelbeck. 

"You — "  she  stammered.  "They  sent 
you — " 

"They?  And  why  should  I  alarm  you? 
Am  I  so  formidable  ? ' '  He  uttered  his  short 
harsh  laugh  and  lifted  his  cap.  His  head  was 
bandaged;  there  was  a  deep  scar  along  the 
outer  line  of  his  right  cheek.  His  face  was 
gaunt  and  lined;  and  his  shoulders  sagged 
until  he  suddenly  bethought  himself  and  flung 
them  back  with  a  deathless  instinct. 

Gisela  smiled  and  gave  him  her  hand  with  a 
graceful  spontaneity.  "The  sense  of  being 
watched  always  shakes  the  nerves  a  bit,  and 
I  have  felt  up  to  nothing  myself  for  a  long 


114     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

time.  Why  did  not  you  come  up  to  the  win 
dow  when  you  recognized  me?" 

"I  was  so  sure  of  welcome!  And  yet  as 
soon  as  I  was  fit  to  travel  I  came  here  to  see 
you.  I  intended  to  send  in  my  card  to-mor 
row.  But  I  could  not  help  haunting  your 
window  to-night,  and  when  I  had  the  good 
fortune  to  see  you  sitting  there — with  the 
moon  shining  on  your  beautiful  face — " 

"My  face  is  no  longer  beautiful,  dear 
Franz—  " 

"You  are  a  thousand  +imes  more  beautiful 
than  ever — " 

Something  else  vibrated  along  those  steel 
nerves,  but  she  said  briskly:  "Standing  so 
long  must  have  tired  you.  Come  in  and  rest. 
It  is  late ;  but  if  there  are  still  conventions  in 
this  crashing  world  I  have  forgotten  them." 

Her  rooms  were  always  prepared  for  a  sud 
den  visit  of  the  police.  If  a  firing  squad  were 
her  fate  it  would  not  have  been  invited 
through  the  usual  channels.  Even  the  arms 
to  be  worn  on  the  morrow  were  in  the  cellars 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     115 

and  attics  of  citizens  so  respectable  as  almost 
to  be  nameless. 

He  followed  her  through  the  common  en 
trance  of  the  apartment  house  into  her  Saal. 
It  was  a  large  comfortable  room  with  many 
deep  chairs,  and  on  the  gray  walls  were  a  few 
portraits  of  her  scowling  ancestors,  con 
tributed  long  since  by  her  mother.  A  tall 
porcelain  stove  glowed  softly.  Gisela  drew 
the  curtains  and  lit  several  candles.  She  dis 
liked  the  hard  glare  of  electricity  at  any 
time,  and  she  admitted  with  a  curious  thrill 
of  satisfaction  that  those  manifestly  sincere 
words  of  her  old  lover  had  given  her  vanity 
a  momentary  resurrection.  Her  suspicions 
were  by  no  means  allayed,  even  when  she  met 
his  eyes  blazing  with  passionate  admiration, 
but  why  not  play  the  old  game  of  the  gods  for 
a'n  hour?  What  better  preparation  for  the 
morrow  than  to  relax  and  forget? 

"Poor  Franz !"  Her  voice  was  the  same 
rich  contralto  whose  promise  had  routed  the 
Howland  millions  years  ago.  ' '  Our  poor  gal- 


116     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

lant  men!  When  will  this  terrible  war 
finish  ?" 

"Ask  your  United  States  of  America !" 
And  he  cursed  that  superfluous  nation 
roundly.  '  '  We  had  some  chance  before.  Not 
so  much,  but  still  some.  Now  we  shall  be 
beaten  to  our  knees,  stamped  into  the  dust, 
straight  down  to  hell."  He  threw  himself 
into  a  chair  and  pressed  his  hands  against 
his  face. 

"But  when?"  Gisela  watched  him  war 
ily.  If  these  were  tactics  they  were  admir 
able;  but  who  more  full  of  theatric  devices 
than  the  Kaiser  he  adored? 

"Years  hence,  no  doubt — if  we  continue  to 
hold  the  Social-Democrats  in  hand  and  drug 
the  people.  We'll  fight  on  until  our  enemies' 
might  proves  that  they  are  right  and  we  were 
fools.  That  is  all  there  is  to  war." 

Gisela  sat  down  and  let  her  hands  fall  into 
her  lap  with  a  little  pathetic  motion  of  weak 
ness.  l '  Sometimes  I  wish  the  Socialists  were 
strong  enough  to  win  and  end  it  all,"  she  said 
plaintively. 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     117 

"Oh,  no,  you  don't.  You  are  a  junker,  for 
all  your  independent  notions,  and  trying  to 
put  some  of  your  own  nerve  into  the  women. 
I  read  you  with  great  amusement  before  the 
war.  But  no  one  knows  better  than  your 
self  that  the  triumph  of  democracy  in  Ger 
many  would  mean  the  end  of  us. ' ' 

"I  cannot  see  that  we  are  enjoying  many 
privileges  at  present — unless  it  be  the  privi 
lege  to  lie  rather  than  be  lied  to.  And  when 
our  enemies  do  win  we  shall  be  pried  out,  root 
and  branch.  So,  why  not  save  our  skins  at 
all  events  ?  I  do  not  mean  mine,  of  course— 
nor,  for  that  matter,  am  I  thinking  of  our 
class;  but  of  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
our  dear  young  men  who  might  be  spared — " 

"Better  die  and  have  done  with  it.  And 
there  is  always  hope — " 

"Hope?" 

"Oh — in  the  separate  peace,  the  ultimate 
submersible,  some  new  invention — the  mira 
cle  that  has  come  to  the  rescue  more  than 
once  in  history.  There  are  times  when  my 
faith  in  the  destiny  of  Germany  to  dominate 


118     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

the  world  is  so  great  that  I  cannot  believe 
it  possible  for  her  to  fail — in  spite  of 
everything,  everything!  And  everything  is 
against  us!  I  never  realized  it  until  I  lay 
there  in  the  hospital.  I  was  too  busy  before, 
and  that  was  my  first  serious  wound.  Oh, 
God!  what  fools  we  were.  What  rotten 
diplomacy.  Even  I  despised  the  United 
States;  but  as  I  lay  there  in  Berlin  their 
irresistible  almighty  power  seemed  to  pass 
before  me  in  a  procession  that  nearly  de 
stroyed  my  reason.  I  knew  the  country  well 
enough,  but  I  would  not  see." 

"They  are  a  very  soft-hearted  people  and 
would  let  us  down  agreeably  if  the  Social- 
Democrats  overturned  the  House  of  Hohen- 
zollern  and  stretched  out  the  imploring  hand 
of  a  young  Eepublic — " 

"No!  No!  A  thousand  times  rather  die 
to  the  last  man  than  be  beaten  within.  That 
would  be  the  one  insupportable  humiliation. 
Canaille!"  He  spat  out  the  word.  "I  re 
fuse  to  recognize  their  existence — " 

He  sprang  to  his  feet  and  before  her  mind 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     119 

could  flash  to  attention  he  had  caught  her 
from  her  chair  and  was  straining  her  to  him, 
his  arms,  his  entire  body,  betraying  no  evi 
dence  whatever  of  depleted  vitality.  "Let 
us  forget  it  all ! ' '  he  muttered.  ' l  We  are  still 
young  and  I  am  free.  I  was  a  fool  once  and 
you  will  believe  me  when  I  tell  you  that  I 
would  beg  you  on  my  knees  to  marry  me  even 
if  you  were  Gisela  Doring.  ...  I  have  leave 
of  absence  for  a  month  ...  let  us  be  happy 
once  more  .  .  . " 

"It  was  a  long  while  ago  ...  all  that  .  .  . 
do  you  realize  how  long?" 

Gisela  stood  rigid,  her  eyes  expanded.  To 
her  terror  and  dismay  she  was  thrilling  and 
flaming  from  head  to  foot.  This  lover  of  her 
life  might  have  released  her  from  one  of  their 
immortal  hours  but  yesterday.  But  although 
she  had  to  brace  her  body  from  yielding,  her 
mind  (and  it  is  the  curse  of  intellectual 
women  of  individual  powers  that  the  mind 
never,  in  any  circumstances,  ceases  to  func 
tion)  realized  that  while  the  human  will  may 
be  strong  enough  to  banish  memories,  and 


120     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

readjust  the  lonely  soul,  its  most  triumphant 
acts  may  be  annihilated  by  the  physical 
contact  of  its  mate.  Unless  replaced.  Fool 
that  she  had  been  merely  to  have  buried  the 
memory  of  this  man  by  an  act  of  will.  She 
should  have  taken  a  commonplace  lover,  or 
husband,  put  out  that  flaming  midnight  torch 
with  the  standardizing  light  of  day. 

Her  mind  seemed  to  be  darting  from  peak 
to  peak  in  a  swift  and  dazzling  flight  as  he 
talked  rapidly  and  brokenly,  kissing  her 
cheek,  her  neck,  straining  her  so  close  to  him 
that  she  could  hardly  breathe.  Suddenly  it 
poised  above  the  memory  of  an  old  book  of 
Kenan's,  "The  Abbess  Juarre,"  in  which  the 
eminent  skeptic  had  somewhat  clumsily  at 
tempted  to  demonstrate  that  if  the  world  un 
mistakably  announced  its  finish  within  three 
days  the  inhabitants  would  give  themselves 
up  to  an  orgy  of  love. 

Well,  her  world  might  end  to-morrow. 
Why  should  she  not  live  to-night? 

Her  arrogant  will  demanded  the  happiness 
that  this  man,  whom  she  had  never  ceased  to 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     121 

love  for  a  moment,  to  whom  she  had  been  un 
consciously  faithful,  alone  could  give  her. 
Moreover,  her  reason  working  side  by  side 
with  her  imperious  desires,  assured  her  that 
if  he  really  were  spying,  and,  whatever  his 
passion,  meant  to  remold  her  will  to  his  and 
snatch  the  keystone  from  the  arch,  it  were 
wise  to  keep  him  here.  It  was  evident  that 
he  had  no  suspicion  of  the  imminence  of  the 
revolution. 

And  it  was  years  since  she  had  felt  all 
woman,  not  a  mere  intellect  ignoring  the  tides 
in  the  depths  of  her  being.  The  revelation 
that  she  was  still  young  and  that  her  will  and 
all  the  proud  achievements  of  her  mind  could 
dissolve  at  this  man's  touch  in  the  crucible  of 
her  passion  filled  her  with  exultation. 

She  melted  into  his  arms  and  lifted  hers 
heavily  to  his  neck. 

" Franz!    Franz !"  she  whispered. 


Gisela  moved  softly  about  the  room  looking 
for  fresh  candles.    Those  that  had  replaced 


122     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

the  moonlight  hours  ago  had  burned  out  and 
she  did  not  dare  draw  the  curtains  apart :  it 
was  too  near  the  dawn.  She  had  no  idea  what 
time  it  was.  But  she  must  have  light,  for  to 
think  was  imperative,  and  her  mental  proc 
esses  were  always  clogged  in  the  dark. 

She  found  the  old  box  of  candles  and 
placed  four  in  the  brackets  and  lit  them. 
Then  she  went  over  to  the  couch  and  looked 
down  upon  Franz  von  Nettelbeck.  He  slept 
heavily,  on  his  side,  his  arms  relaxed  but 
slightly  curved.  In  a  few  moments  she 
went  down  the  hall  to  her  bedroom  and 
took  a  cold  bath  and  made  a  cup  of  strong 
coffee ;  then  dressed  herself  in  a  suit  of  gray 
cloth,  straight  and  loose,  that  her  swiftest 
movements  might  not  be  impeded.  In  the 
belt  under  the  jacket  she  adjusted  her  pistol 
and  dagger. 

She  returned  to  the  Saal  and  once  more 
looked  down  upon  the  unconscious  man. 
How  long  he  had  been  falling  asleep!  She 
had  offered  him  wine,  meaning  to  drug  it, 
but  he  had  refused  lest  it  inflame  his  wounds. 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     123 

She  had  offered  to  make  him  coffee,  but  he 
would  not  let  her  go. 

It  was  in  the  complete  admission  of  her 
reluctance  to  leave  him,  even  after  he  slept, 
and  while  disturbed  by  the  fear  that  the 
dawn  was  nearer  than  in  fact  it  was,  that  she 
stared  down  upon  the  man  who  was  more  to 
her  than  Germany  and  all  its  enslaved  women 
and  men.  He  knew  nothing  of  her  plans, 
had  not  a  suspicion  of  the  revolution,  but  he 
had  vowed  they  never  should  be  parted 
again.  He  had  great  influence  and  could  set 
wheels  in  motion  that  would  return  him  to 
the  diplomatic  service  and  procure  him  an 
appointment  to  Spain ;  where  good  diplomat 
ists  were  badly  needed. 

It  was  an  enchanting  picture  that  he  drew 
in  spite  of  the  horror  that  must  ever  mutter 
at  their  threshold;  but  to  the  awfulness  of 
war  they  were  both  by  this  time  more  or  less 
callous,  although  he  was  mortally  sick  of  the 
war  itself;  and  Gisela,  who  doled  half-meas 
ures  neither  to  herself  nor  others,  had  dis 
missed  the  morrow  and  yielded  herself  to  the 


124     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

joy  of  the  future  as  of  the  present.  What 
she  had  felt  for  this  man  in  her  early  twen 
ties  seemed  a  mere  partnership  of  romance 
and  sentiment  fused  by  young  nerves,  com 
pared  with  the  mature  passion  he  had 
shocked  from  its  long  recuperative  sleep. 
He  was  her  mate,  her  .other  part.  Her  long 
fidelity,  unshaken  by  time,  her  own  tempera 
ment  and  many  opportunities,  all  were  proof 
of  that. 

The  caste  of  great  lovers  in  this  unfinished 
world  is  small  and  almost  inaccessible,  but 
they  had  taken  their  place  by  immemorial 
right.  Were  it  not  for  this  history  of  her 
own  making  they  would  find  every  phase  of 
happiness  in  each  other  as  long  as  they  both 
lived.  Women,  at  least,  know  instinctively 
the  difference  between  the  transient  -passion, 
no  matter  how  powerful,  and  the  deathless 
bond. 

Gisela  glanced  at  her  wrist  watch.  It  was 
within  seventy  minutes  of  the  dawn.  If  she 
could  only  be  sure  that  he  would  sleep  until 
Munich  herself  awoke  him.  But  he  had  told 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     125 

her  that  he  never  slept  these  days  more  than 
two  or  three  hours  at  a  time,  no  matter  how 
weary. 

If  he  awoke  before  it  was  time  for  her  to 
leave  the  house  and  renewed  his  love-making, 
her  response  would  be  as  automatic  as  the 
progress  of  life  itself. 

If  she  attempted  to  leave  the  house  before 
sunrise,  on  no  matter  what  pretext,  his  sus 
picions  would  be  aroused,  for  she  had  told 
him  that  she  had  been  given  a  week  for  rest. 
For  the  same  reason  she  dared  not  awaken 
him  and  ask  him  to  go.  He  would  refuse, 
for  it  was  no  time  to  slip  out  of  a  woman's 
apartment;  far  better  wait  until  ten  o'clock, 
when  there  were  always  visitors  of  both 
sexes  in  her  office.  Moreover,  he  would  no 
more  wish  to  go  than  he  would  permit  her  to 
leave  him. 

She  was  utterly  in  his  power  if  he  awakened 
and  chose  to  exert  it.  He  had  mastered  her, 
conquered  her,  routed  her  career  and  her 
peace,  and  she  had  gloried  in  her  submission ; 
gloried  in  it  still.  A  commonplace  woman 


126     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

would  have  been  satisfied,  satiated,  felt  free 
for  the  moment,  turned  with  relief  to  the  dry 
convention  of  the  daily  adventure,  rather  re 
senting,  if  she  had  a  pretty  will,  the  supreme 
surrender  to  the  race  in  an  unguarded 
hour. 

Gisela  was  cast  in  the  heroic  mold.  She 
came  down  from  the  old  race  of  goddesses 
of  her  own  Nibelungenlied,  whose  passions 
might  consume  them  but  had  nothing  in  com 
mon  with  the  ebb  and  flow  of  mortals.  But 
great  brains  are  fed  by  stormy  souls,  and  in 
the  souls  of  women  there  is  an  element  of 
weakness,  unknown,  save  in  a  few  notable  in 
stances,  to  great  men  in  the  crises  of  their 
destiny;  for  women  are  the  slaves  of  the  race, 
and  nature  when  permitting  them  the  ab 
normality  of  genius  takes  her  revenge. 

If  he  awakened.  .  .  .  There  was  little  time 
for  thought.  She  must  plan  quickly.  If  she 
left  the  house  at  once  he  might  awaken  im 
mediately  and  after  searching  the  apartment, 
follow  her;  there  was  the  dire  possibility 
that  he  would  learn  too  much  before  the  ter- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     127 

rific  drama  of  the  revolution  opened,  and 
manage  to  thwart  their  plans.  He  was  a 
man  of  quick  brain  and  ruthless  will;  no 
consideration  for  her  would  stop  him,  al 
though  he  would  save  her  from  the  conse 
quences  of  her  act,  no  doubt  of  that.  Save 
her  for  himself. 

Mimi  Brandt,  and  Heloise  and  Marie  von 
Erkel  were  asleep  in  rooms  at  the  end  of  the 
hall.  .  .  .  She  had  a  mad  idea  of  binding 
him  hand  and  foot  and  locking  him  in  her 
bedroom.  .  .  .  Either  he  would  hate  her  for 
the  humiliation  he — Franz  von  Nettelbeck, 
glorious  on  the  field  of  honor,  a  bound  pris 
oner  in  a  woman's  bedroom  while  his  class 
was  blown  to  atoms,  and  his  caste  was  roar 
ing  its  impotent  fury  to  a  napping  Gott !  .  .  . 
Oh,  an  insufferable  affront  to  a  man  of  his 
order  who  held  even  the  dearest  woman  as 
the  favored  pensioner  on  his  bounty  ...  or 
she  would  be  consumed  with  remorse,  melt 
...  it  was  positive  that  she  must  visit  him — 
not  leave  him  to  starve  .  .  .  nor  could  she 
keep  him  bound  .  .  .  and  once  more  she 


128     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

would  be  his  slave  .  .  .  could  she  hold  out 
even  for  a  day? 

The  first  blow  of  a  revolution  is,  after  all, 
only  its  first.  There  is  always  the  danger  of 
a  swift  reaction. 

Unremitting  vigilance,  work,  encourage 
ment  are  the  part  of  its  leaders  for  months, 
possibly  years,  to  come.  All  revolutions  are 
dependent  for  ultimate  success  upon  one  pre 
eminent  figure. 

Franz  stirred  under  the  unconscious  fixity 
of  her  gaze  and  changed  his  position,  lying 
on  his  back.  She  hastily  averted  her  eyes. 
Her  hands  clenched  and  spread.  Even  to 
morrow  if  this  man  found  her  .  .  .  one  soft 
moment  .  .  .  when  she  needed  all  her  energy, 
her  fire,  her  powers  of  concentration,  of  de- 
personalization,  for  the  millions  of  tortured 
women  who  would  follow  her  straight  out  to 
meet  any  division  the  Emperor  might  de 
tach  in  the  vain  hope  of  subduing  an  army 
far  outnumbering  all  that  he  had  left  of  men. 

Nothing  but  a  miracle  could  halt  the  initial 
stage  of  the  revolution;  the  wireless  plants 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     129 

were  all  operated  by  women  in  her  service, 
and  no  telephone  message  had  advised  her 
of  danger.  No  matter  what  her  defection  at 
this  moment  the  revolution  would  begin  at 
dawn ;  but  although  Germany  happily  lacked 
the  disintegrating  forces  of  Russia,  comfort 
able  as  she  had  been  for  two  generations,  and 
proud  in  her  discipline,  that  very  discipline 
would  dissolve  its  new  backbone  without  the 
stimulating  force  of  her  own  inexorable  will. 
And  if  she  deserted  them !  .  .  . 

It  was  a  woman 's  revolution.  A  necessary 
number  of  men  Socialists  had  been  admitted 
to  the  secret  and  were  to  strike  the  second 
blow.  But  the  women  must  strike  the  first, 
and  according  to  program.  Not  only  were 
the  men  under  surveillance,  but  where  women 
would  be  pardoned  in  case  of  a  failure,  they 
would  be  shot.  And  most  of  them  had  more 
brain  than  brawn,  were  past  the  fighting  age ; 
the  girls,  and  women  of  middle  years,  were  a 
magnificent  army  which  would  make  the 
graybeards  appear  absurd  in  the  open. 

These  women  worshiped  her,  believed  her 


130     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

to  be  a  super-being  created  to  save  them  and 
their  children;  but  if  she  betrayed  them, 
proved  herself  the  merest  woman  of  them 
all — a  childless  woman  at  that — the  very 
bones  would  melt  out  of  them,  they  would 
prostrate  themselves  in  the  ashes  of  their 
final  despair. 

Spain !  Franz !  For  a  moment  her  imag 
ination  rioted. 

She  smiled  ironically.  Happiness?  Four- 
walled  happiness!  Hardly  for  her,  even 
without  the  blood  of  murdered  thousands 
soaking  her  doorstep.  Love,  for  women  like 
her  .  .  .  even  eternal  love  .  .  .  must  be  epi 
sodical.  Life  forces  the  duties  of  leadership 
on  such  women  whether  they  resent  them  or 
not.  They  must  take  their  love  where  they 
find  it  as  great  men  do,  subordinated  to  their 
chosen  careers  and  the  tremendous  duties 
and  responsibilities  that  are  the  fruit  of  all 
achieved  ambition. 

It  was  true  that  she  had  no  political  am 
bition,  but  for  an  unpredictive  period  she 
must  be  the  beacon-light  of  the  new  Bepub- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     131 

lie,  no  matter  how  successful  the  coup  of  the 
Socialists;  until  some  one  man  (she  knew  of 
none)  or  some  group  of  men  became  strong 
enough  to  control  its  destinies.  The  women 
must  stand  firm,  a  solid  critical  body  led  by 
herself,  until  the  tragically  disciplined  sol 
diers  who  had  survived  these  years  of  war 
fare  had  ceased  to  be  sheep,  or  run  bleating 
to  the  new  fold. 

Even  if  she  won  Franz  over,  her  power 
would  be  sapped;  not  for  a  moment  would  he 
be  out  of  her  consciousness ;  her  imagination 
would  drift  incessantly  from  the  vital  work 
in  hand  to  the  hour  of  their  reunion.  The 
hurtling  power  of  her  eloquence  would  be 
diminished,  her  magnetism  weakened. 

Her  memory  flashed  backward  to  those 
three  years  when  he  was  an  ever-rising  ob 
session — personifying  love  and  completion 
as  he  did — before  which  her  proud  will  fell 
back  again  and  again,  powerless  and  humili 
ated. 

Why,  in  God 's  name  could  not  he  have  come 
back  into  her  life  six  months  hence  ? 


132     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

No  woman  should  risk  a  sex  cataclysm 
when  she  has  great  work  to  do.  Nature  is 
too  subtle  for  any  woman's  will  as  long  as 
the  man  be  accessible.  And  the  strongest 
and  the  proudest  woman  that  ever  lived  may 
have  her  life  disorganized  by  a  man  if  she 
possess  the  power  to  charm  him. 

She  moved  softly  from  the  couch  and 
walked  up  and  down  the  room,  striving  to 
visualize  her  manifest  destiny  and  erect  the 
grim  ideal  of  duty.  Her  mind,  working  at 
lightning  speed,  recalled  moments,  days,  in 
the  past,  when  she  had  let  her  will  relax,  ig 
nored  her  duties,  floated  idly  with  the  tide; 
the  sensation  of  panic  with  which  she  had 
recaptured  at  a  bound  the  ideals  that  gov 
erned  her  life.  Mortal  happiness  was  not 
for  her.  Duty  done,  with  or  without  exalta 
tion  of  spirit,  would  at  least  keep  her  in  tune 
with  life,  preserve  her  from  that  disinte 
grating  horror  of  soul  that  could  end  only 
with  self-annihilation. 

And  end  her  usefulness.  It  was  a  vicious 
circle. 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     133 

Suddenly  a  wave  of  humiliation,  of  insup 
portable  shame,  swept  her  from  sole  to 
crown,  and  she  returned  swiftly  to  her  post 
above  the  sleeping  man.  One  moment  had 
undone  the  work  of  all  those  proud  years 
during  which  she  had  made  herself  over  from 
the  quintessential  lover  into  one  of  the  in 
tellectual  leaders  of  the  world,  a  woman  who 
had  accomplished  what  no  man  had  dared  to 
attempt,  and  who,  if  the  revolution  were  the 
finality  which  before  this  man  came  had 
seemed  to  be  written  in  the  Book  of  Ger 
many,  would  be  immortal  in  history.  Wild 
fevers  of  the  blood,  passionate  longing  for 
completion  in  man,  oneness,  the  "organic 
unit'7 — were  not  for  her. 

All  feeling  ebbed  slowly  out  of  her,  leaving 
her  cold,  collected,  alert.  She  was,  over  all, 
a  woman  of  genius,  the  custodian  of  peculiar 
gifts,  sleeping  throughout  the  ages,  perhaps, 
like  Brunhilde  on  her  rock,  to  awaken  not  at 
the  kiss  of  man,  but  at  the  summons  of  Ger 
many  in  her  darkest  hour. 

She  bent  over  the  man  who  belonged  to  the 


134     THE  WHITE  MORXIXG 

woman  alone  in  her  and  whose  power  over 
her  would  be  exerted  as  ruthlessly  as  her 
own  should  be  over  herself.  He  looked  a 
very  gallant  gentleman  as  he  lay  there,  and 
he  had  been  a  very  brave  soldier.  His  own 
place  was  secure  in  the  annals  of  the  war, 
but  at  this  moment,  following  upon  his  tri 
umphant  swoop  after  happiness,  he  was  the 
one  deadly  menace  to  the  future  of  his 
country. 

Gisela  opened  his  shirt  gently  and  bared 
his  breast.  She  held  her  breath,  but  he  slept 
on  and  she  took  the  dagger  from  her  belt  and 
with  a  swift  hard  propulsion  drove  it  into 
his  heart  to  the  guard.  He  gave  a  long  ex 
piring  sigh  and  lay  still.  A  gallant  gentle 
man,  a  brave  soldier,  and  a  great  lover  had 
the  honor  to  be  the  first  man  to  pay  the  price 
of  his  country's  crime,  on  the  altar  of  the 
Woman's  Kevolutioru 


Gisela    went  swiftly    down   the   hall    and 
awakened  Heloise,  Mimi,  and  Marie  and  told 


THE  WHITE  MORXIXG     135 

them  what  she  had  done.  No  novelty  in  hor 
ror  could  startle  European  women  in  those 
days.  They  dressed  themselves  hastily  in 
their  gray  uniforms  and  followed  her  to  the 
SaaL  With  Mimi'.-  ance  she  put  on  his 

coat,  the  hilt  of  the  dagger  thrusting  forward 
the  row  of  medals  on  his  breast.  Marie  went 
out  into  the  street  and  flitted  up  and  down 
like  a  big  gray  moth,  her  gray  little  face 
tense  with  rapture.  Her  devotion  to  Gisela 
had  been  fanatical  from  the  first  but  now  she 
begged  what  invisible  power  her  wild  little 
mind  still  recognized  to  be  permitted  to  die 
for  her. 

In  a  moment  she  signaled  that  the  street 
was  deserted.  Gisela  and  Mimi  carried  the 
body  over  to  the  park  and  dropped  it  into 
the  swiftly  flowing  Isar.  The  clear  jade 
green  of  the  lovely  river  reflected  the  points 
of  the  stars,  and  Franz  von  Xettelbeck  as  he 
drifted  down  the  tide  looked  as  if  attended 
by  innumerable  candles  dropped  graciously 
from  on  high  to  watch  at  his  bier.  But  it  was 
to  Heloise  this  fancy  came,  and  she  lifted  her 


136     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

face  and  thanked  the  stars  for  their  silent 
funeral  march.  Not  for  her  would  the  su 
preme  sacrifice  have  been  possible,  and  for 
the  moment  she  did  not  envy  Gisela  Doring. 

The  four  girls  walked  rapidly  over  to  the 
Maximilianstrasse  and  crossed  the  bridge  to 
the  Maximilianeum.  The  long  symmetrical 
brown  building  with  its  open  galleries  filled 
with  the  cold  starlight  was  distorted  by  a 
wireless  station  on  its  highest  point  and  by 
a  biplane  on  the  extreme  left  of  the  roof.  It 
stood  on  a  lofty  terrace  and  commanded  a 
view  of  all  Munich  and  of  the  tumbled  peaks 
of  the  Alps. 

They  ran  up  the  stairs  and  called  to  the 
operator  from  the  higher  gallery.  She  an 
swered  in  a  hard  and  weary  voice:  "Noth 
ing."  Then  they  walked  down  the  gallery 
to  the  open  tower  facing  the  Alps.  For  half 
an  hour  longer  they  stood  in  silence,  alter 
nately  glancing  from  their  wrist  watches  to 
the  faintly  glittering  peaks  whose  first  re 
flection  of  dawn,  if  all  went  well,  would 
change  the  face  of  the  world. 


VI 


THE  eyes  of  the  four  women  traveled  to 
the  lofty  towers  of  the  Frauenkirche. 
Its  bells  rang  out  a  wild  authoritative  sum 
mons.  Coincidentally  the  streets  filled  with 
women  dressed  uniformly  in  gray — big  pow 
erfully  built  women,  sturdy  products  of  the 
strong  soil  of  Germany.  They  did  not 
march,  nor  form  in  ranks,  but  stood  silent, 
alert,  shouldering  rifles  with  fixed  bayonets. 
Involuntarily  Gisela  and  her  three  lieuten 
ants  braced  themselves  against  the  pillars  of 
the  tower.  An  instant  later  the  walls  of  the 
Maximilianeum  rocked  under  the  terrific  im 
pact  of  what  sounded  like  a  thousand  explo 
sions.  The  roar  of  parting  walls,  the  shriek 
of  shells  and  bombs  bursting  high  in  the  air, 
the  sharp  short  cry  of  shattered  metal,  the 

137 


138     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

deep  approaching  voice  of  dynamite  prolong 
ing  itself  in  echoes  that  seemed  to  reverberate, 
among  the  distant  Alps,  shook  the  souls  of 
even  those  inured  to  the  murderous  uproar 
of  the  battlefield. 

Grotesquely  combined  with  this  terrific  but 
majestic  confusion  of  sound  were  the  screams 
of  innocent  citizens  hanging  out  of  the  win 
dows,  waving  their  arms,  staring  distraught 
at  the  sky,  convinced,  in  so  far  as  they  could 
think  at  all,  that  a  great  enemy  air  fleet  was 
bombarding  Germany  at  last. 

Masses  of  flame  and  smoke  shot  upward. 
The  pale  morning  sky  turned  black,  rent  with 
darting  crimson  tongues  and  lit  with  pris 
matic  stars.  Other  explosions  followed  in 
rapid  succession,  some  coming  down  the  light 
morning  wind  from  a  long  distance.  Blasts 
of  heat  swept  audibly  through  the  long  gal 
leries  of  the  Maximilianeum. 

"It  is  an  inferno!"  Marie  von  Erkel  for 
the  moment  was  almost  hysterical.  "Will 
Munich  be  destroyed?  Oh,  not  that!" 

"The  fire  brigades  know  their  business." 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     139 

Gisela  glanced  up  at  the  Marconi  station. 
Even  through  the  din  she  could  hear  the  faint 
crackling  of  the  wireless.  "If  all  Ger 
many — " 

But  her  eyes  were  wild.  ...  If  the  revo 
lutionists  in  the  rest  of  the  empire  had 
been  as  prompt  and  fearless  as  those  of 
Bavaria,  every  munition  and  ammunition 
factory,  every  aerodrome  and  public  hangar, 
save  those  taken  possession  of  by  power 
fully  armed  squads  of  women,  every  arse 
nal,  every  warehouse  for  what  gasoline 
and  lubricating  oils  were  left,  every  tele 
graph  and  telephone  wire,  every  railway  sta 
tion  near  either  frontier,  with  thousands  of 
cars  and  miles  of  track  had  been  destroyed 
simultaneously.  The  armies  would  be  iso 
lated,  without  arms  or  ammunition  but  what 
they  had  on  hand  or  could  manufacture  in 
the  invaded  countries ;  no  food  but  what  they 
had  in  storage.  They  could  not  fight  the 
enemy  seven  days  longer;  if  the  Enemy  Al 
lies  heard  immediately  of  the  revolution 
through  neutral  channels  and  believed  in  it 


140     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

after  so  many  false  alarms,  the  finish  of  the 
German  forces  would  come  in  two  days. 

But  had  the  women  of  the  other  states  been 
as  prompt  and  ruthless  as  the  women  of  Ba 
varia?  Spandau,  Essen,  all  the  centers  in 
the  Ehine  Valley  for  the  manufacture  of 
munitions  on  a  grand  scale  .  .  .  the  great 
Krupp  factories  .  .  .  unless  they  were  in 
ruins  the  revolution  was  a  failure.  .  .  . 

She  could  not  be  everywhere  at  once. 
War  and  misery  and  starving  children,  the 
loss  of  the  men  and  boys  they  loved,  and  a 
profound  distrust  of  their  rulers,  had  filled 
them  with  a  cold  and  bitter  hatred  of  an  au 
tocracy  convicted  of  lying  and  aggressive 
purpose  out  of  its  own  mouth ;  but  would  the 
iron  in  their  souls  carry  them  triumphantly 
past  the  final  test!  Women  were  women  and 
Germans  were  not  Russians.  They  had  little 
fatalism  in  their  make-up,  and  their  brain 
cells  were  packed  with  the  tradition  of  centu 
ries  of  submission  to  man.  True,  their  quiet 
revolt  had  begun  long  before  the  war,  and 
this  last  year  had  wrought  extraordinary 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     141 

changes,  quickening  their  mental  processes, 
forcing  them  to  think  and  act  for  themselves ; 
but  their  hearts  might  have  turned  to  water 
during  those  last  dispiriting  hours  before  the 
dawn. 

And  how  could  it  be  possible  that  all 
traitors  had  been  detected,  exterminated, 
with  millions  in  the  secret?  Troops  might 
even  now  be  in  Prussia.  Great  Headquar 
ters  (Grosse  Hauptquartier)  were  in  Pless, 
and  although  the  women  of  that  city  were  not 
in  the  confidence  of  the  revolutionaries,  and 
it  was  to  remain  in  ignorance  as  long  as  pos 
sible,  the  abrupt  cessation  of  telephone  and 
telegraph  communication  would  advise  that 
group  of  alert  brains  that  something  was 
wrong.  Moreover,  even  with  interrupted 
communications  they  would  soon  learn  of  the 
blowing  up  of  factories  in  other  Silesian 
towns ;  no  doubt  hear  them.  It  was  true  the 
railways  and  bridges  between  Pless  and  Ber 
lin  were — if  they  were! — destroyed,  but 
there  were  always  automobiles;  enough  for 
a  small  force.  .  .  .  And  the  police,  the  police 


142     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

of  Berlin!  They  were  still  formidable  in 
spite  of  the  drain  on  men  for  the  front. 
Mariette  had  written  her  grimly  that  she 
would  "take  care  of  'the  rats  in  the  gran 
ary,'  "  meaning  the  police;  but  although 
Mariette  was  the  most  thorough  and  merci 
less  person  she  knew,  she  doubted  even  her 
in  this  awful  moment. 

How  could  she  have  dreamed  of  accom 
plishing  a  universal  revolution  in  a  country 
possessing  the  most  perfect  secret  service 
system  in  the  world  I  ...  a  country  with 
eyes  in  the  back  of  its  head?  True,  the  So 
cialists  in  her  confidence  had  been  noisy  and 
bumptious  of  late  in  order  to  concentrate  at 
tention  upon  their  sex,  and  at  the  same  time 
careful  to  refrain  from  definite  statements 
or  overt  acts.  ...  It  would  never  enter  the 
stupid  official  head  that  German  women 
could  conceive,  much  less  precipitate,  a  revo 
lution;  but  there  must  be  traitors,  women 
who  fundamentally  were  the  slaves  of  men, 
weak  spirits,  spirits  rotten  with  imperi 
alism,  militarism,  but  cunning  in  the  art  of 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     143 

dissimulation.  .  .  .  What  an  accursed  fool 
and  criminal  she  had  been  .  .  .  egotistical 
dreamer!  .  .  .  led  on  by  the  extraordinary 
power  she  had  acquired  over  the  women  of 
her  race.  .  .  . 

For  a  moment  she  clung  to  the  embrasure, 
so  overwhelming  was  her  impulse  to  hurl 
herself  down  into  oblivion.  In  that  dark  and 
shrieking  uproar  she  had  the  illusion  that  she 
was  in  hell,  in  hell  with  her  miserable  vic 
tims. 

But  although  Gisela's  long  slumbering 
nerves  had  had  their  revenge  last  night,  they 
had  given  up  the  fight  when  she  had  de 
stroyed  their  only  ally,  and  these  last  pro 
testing  vibrations  were  very  brief.  Her 
eyes  fell  on  the  ranks  of  women  standing  in 
the  wide  Maximilianstrasse, — a  street  a  mile 
long  and  seventy-five  feet  across — undis 
turbed  by  the  turmoil  they  had  anticipated, 
calmly  awaiting  her  orders.  The  obsession 
passed,  and  after  a  brief  tribute  of  hatred  to 
her  imagination,  which  was,  after  all,  one 
root  of  her  power,  she  turned  and  glanced 


144     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

critically  at  her  three  companions.  Marie, 
looking  like  a  little  gray  gnome,  was  dancing 
about  and  waving  her  arms  in  ecstasy. 
Heloise,  her  long  blonde  hair  hanging  about 
her  fine  French  face,  was  gazing  out  with 
rapt  eyes  and  lips  apart,  as  if  every  sense 
were  drinking  in  the  vision  of  a  Germany 
delivered.  Mimi  was  standing  with  her  arms 
akimbo,  nodding  her  head  emphatically. 

" Great  work,"  she  said  as  she  met  Gisela's 
stern  eyes.  "Better  go  up  to  the  wireless." 

They  ran  rapidly  up  to  the  roof  and  looked 
into  the  little  room.  The  girl  who  sat  there 
nodded  but  did  not  speak.  Her  face  was 
gray  and  tense,  but  there  was  no  evidence  of 
despair.  Gisela  and  Mimi  stood  motionless 
for  what  seemed  to  them  a  stifling  hour,  but 
at  last  the  operator  laid  down  the  receiver. 

<  '  All,  > '  she  said.     ' '  Every  one. ' ' 

"The  Rhine  Valley?" 

The  girl  nodded,  then  rolled  her  jacket  into 
a  pillow,  lay  down  before  the  door  and  im 
mediately  fell  asleep.  It  had  been  a  night 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     145 

of  ghastly  suspense.  Another  operator  was 
already  running  up  the  stair  to  her  relief. 

"Fate!"  cried  Mimi.  "The  same  fate 
that  sank  the  Armada  and  drove  Napoleon  to 
Moscow.  You  had  the  vision — " 

"I  was  the  chosen  instrument — "  Gisela 
walked  rapidly  over  to  the  biplane.  A  girl 
sat  at  the  joy-stick  looking  as  if  carved  out 
of  wood.  There  was  no  more  expression  on 
her  face  than  if  she  were  sitting  in  the  gal 
lery  at  a  rather  dull  play.  Her  lover  and 
six  brothers  were  dead  in  France.  She  had 
watched  her  little  brother  and  her  old  grand 
mother  die  of  malnutrition.  Her  sister  was 
"officially  pregnant"  and  under  surveillance 
lest  she  kill  herself.  No  more  perfect  ma 
chine  was  at  the  disposal  of  Gisela  Doring. 
Whether  Germany  were  delivered  or  razed  to 
the  earth  was  all  one  to  her,  but  she  was  more 
than  willing,  as  a  Bavarian  with  a  traditional 
hatred  of  Prussia,  to  play  her  part  in  the 
downfall  of  a  race  that  presumed  to  call  it 
self  German. 


146     THE  WHITE  MORNING 


Gisela  stepped  into  the  machine  and  it 
glided  downward  and  skimmed  lightly  over 
the  great  length  of  the  Maximilianstrasse. 

The  compact  ranks,  which  had  listened  un 
moved  to  the  roar  of  dynamite  and  the  de 
tonations  of  bursting  shells,  raised  their 
faces  at  the  humming  of  the  machine  and 
broke  into  harsh  abrupt  cheering.  Then 
they  leaned  their  rifles  against  their  power 
ful  bodies  and  unfurled  their  flags  and  waved 
them  in  the  faces  of  the  half  paralyzed  peo 
ple  in  the  windows.  It  was  a  white  flag  with 
a  curious  device  sketched  in  crimson:  a  hen 
in  successive  stages  of  evolution.  The  final 
phase  was  an  eagle.  The  body  was  modeled 
after  the  Prussian  emblem  of  might,  but  the 
face,  grim,  leering,  vengeful,  pitiless,  was 
unmistakably  that  of  a  woman.  However 
humor  may  be  lacking  in  the  rest  of  that 
grandiose  Empire  it  was  grafted  into  the 
Bavarians  by  Satan  himself. 

Gisela  nodded.    "The  hens  are  eagles — all 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     147 

over  Germany, "  she  announced  in  her  full 
carrying  voice.  "Word  has  come  through 
from  every  quarter." 

She  flew  down  the  Leopoldstrasse.  It  was 
packed  with  women  from  the  Feldherrnhalle 
to  the  Siegesthor,  cheering  women,  waving 
their  flags,  armed  to  the  teeth.  So  was  the 
great  Park  of  the  Eesidenz,  the  Hofgarten, 
where  the  guards  were  either  bound  or  dead. 
It  took  her  but  a  few  moments  to  fly  all  over 
Munich.  The  narrow  streets  were  deserted, 
save  for  the  prostrate  policemen  bound  sud 
denly  from  ambush;  but  in  all  the  beautiful 
squares,  with  their  pompous  statues,  and  in 
all  the  wider  streets,  and  out  in  the  wide 
Theresien  Field  before  the  colossal  figure  of 
Bavaria,  the  women  were  gathered;  relaps 
ing  into  phlegmatic  calm  as  soon  as  she  had 
given  her  message  and  passed. 

But  it  was  by  no  means  a  scene  of  un 
broken  dignity  and  silence.  Here  and  there 
groups  of  men  in  uniform  lay  dead,  sword  or 
pistol  in  hand.  Once  Gisela  flew  low  and  dis 
charged  her  revolver  into  the  shoulder  of  a 


148     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

big  officer,  half  dressed  and  barely  recov 
ered  from  his  wounds,  who  was  keeping  off 
half  a  dozen  women  with  magnificent  sword 
play.  The  women  gave  one  another  first 
aid,  then  lifted  and  pitched  him  into  his 
house. 

There  was  sniping,  of  course,  from  the 
windows,  but  the  women  made  a  concerted 
rush  and  disposed  of  the  terrified  offender 
as  remorselessly  as  their  own  men  had  pun- 
ished  the  desperate  civilians  of  the  lands 
they  had  invaded.  They  had  heard  their 
men  brag  for  too  many  years  about  their  ad 
mirable  policy  of  Schrecklichkeit  to  forget 
the  lesson  in  this  fateful  hour. 

The  most  exciting  scenes  and  the  only  ones 
in  which  any  of  the  women  were  killed  were 
in  the  vicinity  of  the  garrison.  These  in 
terior  garrisons  of  the  country  had  been  one 
of  the  long  debated  problems.  As  no  women 
entered  them  and  as  it  was  not  safe  to  at 
tempt  the  corruption  of  any  of  the  men,  there 
were  but  two  alternatives :  blow  them  up  and 
sacrifice  the  men  wholesale  or  meet  them 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     149 

with  a  superior  force  as  they  rushed  out  to 
ascertain  the  nature  of  the  explosions,  and 
fight  them  in  open  battle.  Gisela  had  finally 
decided  to  give  them  a  chance  for  their  lives, 
as  she  had  no  mind  to  shed  any  more  blood 
than  was  unavoidable ;  and  these  men,  being 
no  longer  in  their  prime,  must  be  overcome 
eventually,  no  matter  what  their  fury. 

When  she  hovered  over  the  Marztplatz  in 
front  of  the  garrison  a  few  moments  after 
the  last  of  the  explosions,  and  while  fire  was 
still  raging  in  this  military  quarter  of  maga 
zines,  arsenals  and  laboratories,  men  and 
women  were  mixed  in  a  hideous  confusion, 
shooting  and  slashing  indiscriminately.  But 
there  were  thousands  of  women  and  only  a 
few  hundred  men,  all  of  whom  at  one  time  or 
another  had  been  wounded.  Finally  the  cap 
tain  of  this  regiment  of  women  ordered  a 
swift  retreat,  and  simultaneously  three  ma 
chine  guns  opened  fire  from  innocent  looking 
windows,  but  on  the  garrison  building,  not  on 
the  square.  They  ceased  after  one  round, 
and  the  captain  of  the  women  gave  such  men 


150     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

as  were  alive  and  unwounded  their  choice  be 
tween  death  and  surrender.  They  chose  the 
sensible  alternative,  were  driven  within,  and 
placed  under  a  heavy  guard. 

It  was  not  safe  to  venture  too  close  to  the 
still  exploding  and  blazing  structures,  but  it 
was  quite  apparent  that  the  work  had  been 
done  thoroughly.  The  fire  brigades  were 
busy,  and  there  was  little  danger  of  Munich, 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  romantic  cities 
in  the  world,  falling  a  victim  to  the  revolu 
tion.  Many  lives  had  been  sacrificed,  no 
doubt.  The  women  night-workers  in  the  fac 
tories,  fifteen  minutes  before  the  signal  from 
the  Frauenkirche,  had  pretended  to  strike, 
seized  all  the  hand  arms  available  and  shot 
down  the  men  who  attempted  to  control 
them.  The  men  in  the  secret  had  gone  with, 
them  and  were  already  about  their  busi 
ness. 

The  officers  in  charge  of  the  Class  of  1920 
were  too  few  in  number  to  make  any  resist 
ance,  too  dazed  to  grasp  a  situation  for 
which  there  was  no  precedent ;  they  had  sur- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     151 

rendered  to  the  Amazons  grimly  awaiting 
their  decision.  The  poor  boys  in  the  Kadet- 
tenkorps  had  run  home  to  their  mothers,  and, 
finding  them  in  the  streets,  had  either  taken 
refuge  in  the  cellars,  or  joined  those  formid 
able  warriors  in  gray,  promising  obedience 
and  yielding  their  arms. 

Other  aeroplanes  were  darting  about  the 
city.  The  greater  number  were  driven  by 
women,  directing  the  fire  brigades,  but  now 
and  again  a  man,  whose  monoplane  had  been 
in  his  private  shed,  flew  upward  primed  for 
battle.  After  a  few  parleys  he  retired  to 
await  events,  one  only  shooting  a  woman, 
and  crashing  to  earth  riddled  with  avenging 
bullets. 

Such  air  men  as  were  in  Munich  were  too 
callous  to  danger  of  all  sorts,  too  accustomed 
to  the  horrors  of  the  battlefield,  to  take  this 
outpouring  of  women  and  mere  civilians  seri 
ously;  even  in  spite  of  the  explosions,  which, 
to  be  sure,  denoted  an  appalling  amount  of 
destruction.  Any  attempt  to  sally  forth  on 
foot  and  ascertain  the  extent  of  the  damage 


152     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

was  met  by  bayonets  and  pistols  in  the  hands 
of  brigades  of  women  whose  like  they  had 
never  seen  in  Germany.  They  inferred  they 
were  Russians,  who  had  managed  to  cross 
the  frontier  with  the  infernal  subtlety  of 
their  race.  At  all  events  they  would  be  ex 
terminated  with  no  effort  of  men  lacking 
authority  to  act. 


Several  of  the  women  flew  out  into  the 
country,  but  except  where  people  were  gath 
ered  about  smoking  ruins  the  land  was  at 
peace;  there  was  no  sign  of  a  rally  to  the 
blue  and  white  flag  of  Bavaria,  no  sign  of 
an  avenging  army.  In  the  course  of  the 
morning  there  were  hundreds  of  these  avia 
tors  darting  about  Bavaria,  descending  to 
tell  the  peasants  or  shop-keepers  of  the  small 
towns  that  Germany  was  in  revolution,  the 
armies  deprived  of  all  support,  and  that  the 
Republic  had  been  proclaimed  in  Berlin. 
The  Social  Democrats  had  possession  of  the 
Reichstaggebaude,  and  every  official  head  still 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     153 

affixed  to  its  shoulders  was  as  helpless — a 
fuming  prisoner  in  its  own  house — as  if 
those  arrogant  brains  had  turned  to  por 
ridge.  Every  royal  and  official  residence 
throughout  the  Empire  was  surrounded  by 
an  army  of  women  with  fixed  bayonets,  and 
before  noon  every  unsubmissive  member  of 
the  old  regime  would  be  in  either  a  fortress 
or  the  common  prison. 

This  news  Grisela  heard  at  ten  o  'clock  when 
she  returned  to  the  wireless  station  on  the 
Maximilianeum.  The  Berlin  news  came 
from,  Mariette. 

In  Munich  the  old  King  had  been  returned 
to  the  Red  Palace  which  he  had  occupied 
during  the  long  years  of  his  father's  regency, 
and  it  too  was  surrounded  by  an  alert  but 
silent  army.  The  other  royal  palaces  were 
guarded  in  a  similar  manner,  but  the  women 
had  no  intention  of  killing  these  kindly  Wit- 
telsbachs  if  it  could  be  avoided.  All  they 
asked  of  them  was  to  keep  quiet,  and  keep 
quiet  they  did.  After  all,  they  had  reigned 
a  thousand  years.  Perhaps  they  were  tired. 


154     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

Certainly  they  always  looked  bored  to  the 
verge  of  dissolution. 

The  Munich  Socialists  had  taken  posses 
sion  of  the  Eesidenz  in  which  to  proclaim 
their  victory  and  the  new  Eepublic,  and  by 
this  time  were  crowding  the  Hofgarten  and 
adjoining  streets.  They  were  unarmed  and 
many  of  the  women  moved  constantly  among 
them,  ready  at  a  second's  notice  to  dispose 
summarily  of  any  man  who  even  scowled  his 
antagonism  to  the  downfall  of  monarchy. 

Six  hundred  women,  according  to  the  pre 
arranged  program,  and  under  Gisela's  di 
rect  supervision,  were  turning  such  outlying 
buildings  as  commanded  the  highways  lead 
ing  toward  the  frontiers  into  fortifications. 
They  had  little  apprehension  that  their  sons 
and  fathers,  their  husbands  and  lovers, 
would  fire  on  the  women  to  whom  they  had 
brought  home  food  from  their  rations  these 
two  years  past,  or  that  the  General  Staff 
would  risk  the  demolition  of  the  cities  of 
Germany.  But  they  took  no  chances,  know 
ing  that  an  attempt  might  be  made  to  rush 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     155 

them.  In  that  case  they  were  determined  to 
remember  only  that  their  husbands  and  sons, 
fathers  and  lovers,  were  bent  upon  their  final 
subjection.  Moreover,  the  term  "  brain 
storm"  had  long  since  found  its  way  from 
the  United  States  to  Germany,  and  the 
women  thought  it  singularly  applicable  to 
their  former  masters  when  in  a  state  of  baf 
fled  rage. 


VII 


MABIETTE'S  communications  by  wire 
less  were  very  brief,  and  on  the 
second  day  of  the  revolution  Gisela  went  by 
special  train  to  Berlin.  It  was  the  King's 
own  train,  and  always  ready  to  start.  The 
engineer  and  fireman  avowed  themselves 
" friends  of  the  revolution,"  but  they  per 
formed  their  duties  with  two  armed  women 
in  the  cab  and  fifty  more  in  the  car  behind 
the  engine. 

The  cities  through  which  Gisela  passed, 
as  well  as  the  small  towns  and  wayside  vil 
lages,  presented  a  uniform  appearance: 
smoking  ruins  in  the  outlying  sections  which 
had  been  devoted  to  the  war  factories,  and 
streets  deserted  save  for  women  sentries. 
One  or  two  of  the  smaller  towns  had  burned, 
owing  to  lack  of  fire  brigades.  The  food 

156 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     157 

trains  destined  for  the  front,  which  had  been 
moved  out  of  danger  before  the  general  de 
struction,  were  being  systematically  un 
loaded,  and  a  portion  of  the  contents  doled 
out  to  thousands  of  emaciated  men,  women, 
and  children.  The  rest  would  be  as  method 
ically  returned  to  the  warehouses. 

Gisela  arrived  in  Berlin  half  an  hour  be 
fore  the  Kaiser. 

The  city  was  as  dark  as  interstellar  space 
and  she  would  have  been  forced  to  spend  the 
night  in  the  Anhalt  Bahnhof  if  Mariette  had 
not  met  her.  They  walked  from  the  station, 
keeping  close  to  the  walls  of  the  silent  houses 
and  entering  Unter  den  Linden  from  the 
Friedrichstrasse.  There  was  not  a  sound 
but  the  high  whirr  of  airplanes  keeping 
guard  over  a  city  that  seemed  stifled  in  the 
embrace  of  death,  its  life  current  switched 
off  by  the  proudest  achievement  of  its  pesti 
lent  laboratories. 

Mariette  did  not  take  the  trouble  to  lower 
her  hard  incisive  voice  as  she  told  her  sister 
the  brief  story  of  the  revolution  in  Berlin. 


158     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

"I  left  not  a  loophole  for  failure.  Two 
minutes  before  the  bells  rang  every  police 
man  on  duty  was  shot  dead  from  a  doorway 
or  window.  The  police  offices  and  stations 
were  blown  up.  There  is  not  a  policeman 
alive  in  Berlin.  I  also  ordered  the  garrisons 
blown  up.  Both  the  police  and  the  garrisons 
here  were  too  strong.  I  dared  not  risk  an 
encounter.  Criticize  me  if  you  will.  It  is 
done.'* 

"But  the  Emperor,  the  General  Staff?" 
Gisela  was  in  no  mood  to  waste  a  thought 
upon  means,  nor  even  upon  accomplished 
ends.  '  '  If  they  left  Pless'  at  once  tliey  should 
have  been  here  before  this." 

'  '  They  did  not  leave  Pless  at  once.  When 
they  began  to  send  out  questions  by  wireless 
after  they  found  their  telephone  and  tele 
graph  wires  cut,  they  were  kept  quiet  for 
several  hours  by  soothing  message^  sent  by 
our  women  in  Breslau  and  nearer  towns.  An 
abortive  uprising  of  a  handful  of  starving 
Socialists !  Even  when  their  fliers  went  out 
they  could  learn  nothing  because  they  dared 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     159 

not  land  even  at  Breslau;  high-firing  guns 
threatened  them  everywhere.  All  they  could 
report  was  that  the  streets  were  full  of 
armed  women,  which,  of  course,  the  General 
Staff  took  as  an  unseemly  joke.  But  toward 
night  a  soldier  who  had  managed  to  escape 
from  Breslau  came  staggering  into  Great 
Headquarters  with  information  that  pene 
trated  even  that  composite  Prussian  skull: 
the  women  of  Germany  had  risen  en  masse 
and  effected  a  revolution.  Of  course  they 
refused  to  believe  the  worst — that  every 
ounce  and  inch  of  war  material  had  been  de 
stroyed  ;^md  the  entire  Staff,  escorted  by  a 
thousand  trooj^-all  they  had  on  hand — 
started  for  Berlin.  They  did  not  omit  to 
wireless  in  both  directions  for  troops  to 
march  on  Berlin  at  once ;  but,  needless  to  say, 
these  messages  were  deflected.  As  the  tracks 
were  torn  up  they  were  obliged  to  travel  by 
automobile,  and  as  the  bridges  over  the 
Kloonitz  Canal  and  the  Oder  tributaries  had 
been  blown  up,  they  were  unable  to  ameli 
orate  what  must  have  been  an  apoplectic  im- 


160     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

patience.  No  doubt  a  few  of  them  are  dead. 
Of  course  their  progress  has  been  watched 
and  reported  every  hour,  but  they  have  not 
been  molested.  We  want  them  here.  Only 
their  small  air  squadron  has  been  shot 
down." 

They  felt  their  way  along  Unter  den  Lin 
den  by  the  trees  and  entered  the  Opernplatz. 
Two  biplanes  awaited  them  before  the  ar 
senal.  There  were  lights  in  the  great  pile  of 
the  Hohenzollerns  across  the  bridge.  TTn- 
easy  spirits  prowled  there,  no  doubt,  but 
none  of  the  women  of  the  Imperial  family 
had  made  any  attempt  to  escape,  accepting 
the  assurances  of  the  revolutionists  that  no 
harm  should  come  to  them,  and,  knowing 
nothing  of  the  thorough  methods  taken  to  re 
duce  the  army  to  impotence,  awaited  with 
what  patience  they  could  muster — and  royal 
women  are  the  most  patient  in  the  world — 
the  invincible  troops  that  must  come  within 
a  day  or  two  to  their  rescue. 

The  two  biplanes  flew  over  to  the  streets 
east  of  the  Emperor's  palace  and  hovered 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     161 

just  above  the  house  tops  until  the  eyes  of 
Gisela  and  Mariette,  now  accustomed  to  a 
darkness  unpierced  by  moon  or  stars,  made 
out  a  long  line  of  moving  blackness  in  the 
narrow  gloom  of  the  Koniginstrasse.  The 
forward  cars  entered  the  palace  from  the 
Schlossplatz,  and  as  lights  immediately  ap 
peared  in  the  courtyards  Gisela  saw  eight  or 
ten  men  alight  stiffly  and  hurriedly  enter 
the  inner  portals.  The  other  automobiles 
ranged  themselves  in  an  apparently  un 
broken  line  on  all  sides  of  the  palace.  Gisela 
had  amused  herself  imagining  the  nervous 
speculations  of  those  war-hardened  poten 
tates  and  warriors  as  they  crawled  through 
the  sinister  darkness  of  the  capital — proud 
witness  of  a  thousand  triumphal  marches; 
of  the  sharp  and  darting  gaze  above  the  guns 
of  the  armored  cars,  expecting  an  ambush  at 
every  corner.  How  they  must  hate  a  situa 
tion  so  utterly  without  precedent. 

Gisela  almost  laughed  aloud  as  she  saw  the 
purple  flag,  denoting  that  the  Emperor  was 
in  residence,  run  up  on  the  north  side  of 


162     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

the  palace.  However,  automatic  discipline 
worked  both  ways. 

Once  more  Berlin  was  as  silent  as  if  at  rest 
for  ever  under  the  pall  of  darkness  that 
seemed  to  have  descended  from  the  dark  and 
threatening  sky. 

But  only  for  a  moment. 

Berlin  suddenly  burst  into  a  blinding  glare 
of  light.  Unter  den  Linden  from  end  to  end 
— excepting  only  the  royal  palaces — with  its 
long  line  of  imposing  public  buildings,  ho 
tels,  and  shops,  the  Kaiser-Franz-Joseph- 
Platz,  the  Zeugplatz,  the  Lustgarten — the 
Schlossplatz — all  the  magnificent  expanse 
from  the  Brandenburg  gate  to  a  quarter  of 
a  mile  beyond  the  river  Spree — had  been 
strung  and  looped  with  electric  lights,  and 
the  scene  looked  as  if  touched  with  a  royal 
fairy's  wand.  The  side  streets  from  the 
Koyal  Library  and  the  old  Kaiser  Wilhelm 
palace  as  far  as  the  Schlossbriicke,  were  also 
brilliantly  illuminated. 

And  in  all  these  streets  and  squares  women 
stood  in  close  ranks,  silent,  phlegmatic 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     163 

women,  with  pistols  in  their  belts  and  rifles 
with  fixed  bayonets  on  their  shoulders,  the 
steel  reflecting  the  terrific  downpour  of  light 
with  a  steady  and  menacing  glitter.  These 
women  wore  gray  uniforms  and  there  were 
shining  Prussian  helmets  on  their  heads. 

In  every  window  was  a  double  row  of 
women,  armed;  and  the  housetops  were 
crowded  with  them.  There  were  also  ma 
chine  guns  on  the  roofs,  pointing  downward 
or  toward  the  roof  of  the  palace. 

Mariette  laughed.  "Theatric  enough  to 
please  even  his  taste  ?  Our  last  tribute.  Let 
us  hope  he  will  enjoy  it." 

A  moment  later  the  expected  happened. 
A  window  of  the  palace  overlooking  the 
great  Schlossplatz  opened  and  the  Emperor 
stepped  out  into  the  narrow  balcony.  His 
uniform  was  caked  with  dust  and  mud  and 
his  face  was  drawn  with  a  mortal  fatigue; 
but  as  he  stood  there  scowling  haughtily  down 
upon  that  upturned  sea  of  woman's  faces, 
the  most  singular  vision  that  ever  had 
greeted  imperial  eyes,  he  was  an  imposing 


164     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

figure  enough  to  those  who  knew  that  he  was 
the  Kaiser  Wilhelm  II,  King  of  Prussia  and 
Alsace-Lorraine,  and  Emperor  in  Germany. 

It  was  evident  that  he  had  no  intention  of 
speaking,  but  expected  this  grotesque  mob  to 
be  overwhelmed  by  the  imperial  presence  and 
dissolve. 

Frau  Kathie  Meyers,  with  the  figure  of  an 
Amazon  and  the  voice  of  a  megaphone, 
stepped  forth  from  the  ranks  and  lifted  her 
placid  red  face  to  the  balcony. 

"You  will  abdicate,  William  Hohenzol- 
lern,"  she  announced  in  tones  that  rolled 
down  toward  the  Brandenburg  gate  like  the 
overtones  of  a  Death  Symphony  at  the  Front. 
"Germany  is  a  Eepublic.  And  the  palace  is 
mined.  If  your  soldiers  fire  one  shot  from 
the  windows  the  palace  goes  up  to  meet  the 
ghosts  of  every  arsenal  and  every  ammuni 
tion  factory  in  what  two  days  ago  was  the 
Empire  of  Germany.  Your  armies  are  help 
less.  You  will  remain  a  prisoner  within 
your  palace  until  we  have  decided  whether 
to  deliver  you  to  Great  Britain,  incarcerate 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     165 

you  in  a  fortress,  or  permit  you  to  live  in  ex 
ile.  It  will  depend  upon  the  behavior  of  the 
army  when  it  returns.  If  you  attempt  to 
leave  the  palace  you  will  be  shot." 

The  Emperor  stared  down  upon  that  mass 
of  calm  implacable  faces,  so  unmistakably 
German ;  not  brilliant  nor  beautiful,  but  per 
sistent  as  death,  and  stamped  with  the  water 
mark  of  kultur ;  stared  for  a  long  moment,  his 
gray  face  twitching,  the  familiar  gray  blaze 
in  his  eyes.  But  he  turned  without  a  word 
or  even  a  disdainful  gesture  and  reentered 
the  palace,  the  window  closing  immediately 
behind  him. 

The  Amazon  addressed  the  men  in  the 
armored  automobiles  that  surrounded  the 
palace. 

"Fire  upon  us  if  you  like.  Our  ranks  are 
close  and  you  will  kill  many.  But  not  one 
of  you  will  live  to  eat  rat  sausage  tomorrow 
morning.  Now  disarm  and  march  to  the 
guard  house. " 

The  contemptible  little  army  of  the  Kaiser, 
hypnotized  as  much  by  the  glare  as  by  this 


166     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

solid  mass  of  vindictive  females — singly  so 
negligible — shrugged  their  shoulders,  sur 
rendered  their  arms,  and  marched  off  under 
guard.  After  all,  they  would  have  a  blessed 
rest,  however  brief,  before  the  great  generals 
sent  back  a  few  brigades  to  execute  sum 
mary  vengeance  upon  these  presumptuous 
women,  who  had  used  their  incidental  supe 
riority  in  numbers  so  basely. 


But  nothing  came  from  the  front  but  fran 
tic  orders  by  wireless  to  the  staunch  but  im 
potent  pillars  of  the  old  regime.  The  Brit 
ish,  French,  and  American  forces,  convinced 
at  last  that  German  women  actually  had  ef 
fected  a  revolution — God  knew  how! — at 
tacked  every  point  of  the  line  from  Flanders 
to  Belfort,  and  their  aviators  dropped  news 
papers  containing  the  extraordinary  but 
verified  story,  into  the  German  trenches  and 
back  of  the  lines. 

The  destruction  of  the  railways  leading  to 
the  Austria-Hungarian  Empire,  as  well  as 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     167 

all  the  rolling  stock  within  three  miles  of  the 
frontier,  balked  any  attempt  to  rush  supplies 
in  from  the  east,  and  in  two  days  Austria 
was  in  the  throes  of  a  revolution  far  more 
devastating  internally  than  Germany's,  for 
that  excitable  and  harassed  people,  long  on 
the  verge  of  despair,  merely  caught  the  revo 
lution-microbe  and  went  mad. 

To  supply  either  the  army  opposing  Italy 
or  that  in  Eoumania  and  Gfallicia,  to  say 
nothing  of  that  in  the  Northeast,  was  no 
longer  even  considered.  The  young  Em 
peror  sought  only  to  come  to  an  understand 
ing  with  his  people. 

It  was  a  matter  of  days  before  both  am 
munition  and  food  would  be  exhausted  on  the 
two  fronts,  and  neither  had  a  superfluous 
man  to  send  to  Berlin,  or  even  to  repair  the 
tracks. 


By  Friday  there  was  no  longer  any  doubt 
of  the  complete  success  of  the  Eevolution. 
Britain,  France,  Eussia,  Italy,  the  United 


168     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

States,  with  a  prompt  and  canny  statesman 
ship,  remarkable  in  Governments,  had  form 
ally  acknowledged  the  German  Eepublic,  and 
offered  terms  of  peace  possible  for  an  ambi 
tious  and  self-respecting  but  beaten  people 
to  accept.  At  all  events  there  would  be  no 
commercial  boycott,  and  the  young  Eepub 
lic  would  be  given  every  assistance  in  restor 
ing  the  shattered  finances  of  Germany,  and 
its  economic  relations  with  the  rest  of  the 
world. 

The  good  German  people  were  flattered  in 
phrases  that  they  rolled  on  their  tongues. 
Even  those  too  schooled  in  lies  to  believe  the 
statesmen  of  their  own  or  any  land  reflected 
that,  after  all,  the  Enemy  Allies  had  dem 
onstrated  they  were  sportsmen,  that  Ger 
man  prisoners  had  been  well  treated,  and 
that  before  the  war  there  had  been  no  re 
strictions  upon  German  commerce  save  in 
insidious  reiterated  words  of  men  deter 
mined  upon  war  at  any  cost.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  Germany  had  been  absorbing  the  com- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     169 

merce  of  the  world,  and  Britain  had  been 
reprehensibly  supine. 

As  the  Socialists  now  did  all  the  talking, 
and  unhindered,  it  was  not  difficult  to  per 
suade  even  the  reluctant  minority  that  the 
military  party  had  precipitated  the  war  in  a 
sudden  panic  at  the  rapidly  developing  power 
of  the  proletariat. 

Night  fliers  dropped  millions  of  leaflets  in 
the  vicinity  of  the  armies  on  the  Eastern  and 
Western  fronts,  signed  (at  the  pistol  point) 
by  the  most  powerful  names  in  the  former 
Government,  as  well  as  by  the  well-known 
Social-Democrat  leaders,  containing  the  de 
tails  of  the  Revolution  and  proofs  of  its  suc 
cess.  The  Empire  had  fallen.  A  Eepublic, 
acknowledged  by  the  great  powers  of  the 
world,  was  established.  Would  the  soldiers 
stack  their  arms  and  return  to  their  homes? 
If  the  generals  or  under  officers  attempted  to 
restrain  them  it  was  to  be  remembered  that 
the  soldiers  were  as  a  hundred  thousand  to 
one. 


170     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

The  women  felt  no  real  apprehension  of 
an  avenging  army.  They  knew  the  average 
German  male.  His  innate  subserviency  to 
power  would  turn  him  automatically  about 
to  the  party  whose  power  was  supreme. 
And  the  soldiers  hated  their  officers. 


VIII 

ON  Friday  night  Gisela  left  her  apart 
ment  in  the  Koniginstrasse,  where  she 
had  slept  for  a  few  hours  after  a  visit  to  the 
principal  cities  of  the  Empire,  and  walked 
out  to  Schwabing,  that  picturesque  "village" 
that  looked  like  a  bit  of  the  Alps  transferred 
to  the  edge  of  Munich.  She  had  not  forgot 
ten  the  man  she  had  sacrificed,  and  at  the 
end  of  the  first  day  of  the  Revolution  she 
had  learned  that  his  body  had  been  caught 
under  the  Schwabing  bridge,  rescued,  and 
placed  temporarily  in  the  vault  of  the  little 
church. 

It  was  a  bright  starlight  night,  and  the 
old  white  church  with  its  bulbous  tower,  last 
outpost  of  Turkey  in  her  heyday,  looked 
like  a  lone  mourner  for  the  dream  of  Mittel- 
Europa.  Gisela  climbed  the  mound  and  en 
tered  the  quiet  enclosure.  She  had  met  no 
171 


172     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

one  in  the  peaceful  suburb,  although  she  had 
heard  the  deep  guttural  voices  of  elderly  men 
still  lingering  at  the  tables  in  the  beer  gar 
dens. 

She  had  sent  orders  to  leave  the  door  of 
the  church  unlocked,  and  she  entered  the 
barren  room,  guiding  herself  with  her  electric 
torch  to  the  stair  that  led  down  to  the  vault. 
Fear  of  any  sort  had  long  since  been  crowded 
out  of  her,  but  it  was  a  lonely  pilgrimage  she 
hardly  would  have  undertaken  ten  days  ago. 

She  descended  the  short  flight  of  steps  and 
flashed  her  light  about  the  vault.  It  was  a 
small  room,  oppressively  musty  and  humid. 
All  Schwabing  is  damp  but  the  Isar  itself 
might  have  washed  the  walls  of  this  dripping 
sepulcher.  The  coffin  stood  on  a  rough 
trestle  in  the  center  of  the  chamber,  and  it 
was  covered  with  the  military  cloak  that, 
with  his  sword  and  helmet,  she  had  ordered 
sent  from  his  hotel. 

She  stood  beside  the  coffin,  trying  to  visu 
alize  the  man  who  lay  within,  wondering  if 
the  orders  still  bulged  above  the  hilt  of  the 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     173 

dagger  she  had  driven  in  with  so  firm  a  hand 
...  or  if  they  had  taken  the  time  to  remove 
it  ...  or  if  that  symbol  of  Germany's  free 
dom  would  be  found  ages  hence  in  a  handful 
of  dust  when  the  man  who  had  taught  her  all 
she  would  ever  know  of  love  or  living  was 
long  forgotten.  .  .  . 

But  in  a  moment  these  vagrant  fancies, 
drifting  from  a  tired  brain,  took  flight,  her 
reluctant  mind  focused  itself,  and  she  knelt 
beside  the  bier,  pressing  the  folds  of  the 
cloak  about  her  face  and  weeping  heavily. 

It  was  her  final  tribute  to  her  womanhood. 
That  she  had  rescued  her  country  and  inci 
dentally  the  world,  making  democracy  and 
liberty  safe  for  the  first  time  in  its  history, 
mattered  nothing  to  her  then.  Nor  her  im 
mortal  fame. 

To  regret  was  impossible.  Strong  souls 
are  inaccessible  to  regret.  But  she  hated  life 
and  her  bitter  destiny,  for  she  had  sacri 
ficed  the  life  that  gave  meaning  to  her  own, 
and  she  wished  that  the  implacable  Powers 
that  rule  the  destinies  of  individuals  and  na- 


174     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

tions  had  foreborne  their  accustomed  irony 
and  presented  her  gifts  to  some  woman  mer 
cifully  lacking  her  own  terrible  power  to  love 
and  suffer — and  the  imagination  which 
would  keep  for  ever  vivid  in  her  mind  the 
poignant  happiness  that  had  been  hers  and 
that  she  had  immolated  on  the  cold  altar  of 
duty.  She  was  still  young,  and  her  sole 
hope,  glimmering  at  the  end  of  an  intermin 
able  perspective,  was  that  it  would  be  her 
privilege  to  lie  at  last  in  the  grave  with  this 
man ;  who  had  been  her  other  part  and  whose 
heart  and  hers  she  had  slain. 


THE  WOMEN  OF  GERMANY 

An  Argument  for  my  "The  White  Morning" 


From  The  Bookman,  February,  1918, 
by  courtesy  of  Dodd,  Mead   &   Co. 


THE  WOMEN  OF  GERMANY 
An  Argument  for  my  "The  White  Morning'' 

I  HAVE  been  asked  by  the  Editor  of  The  Book 
man  to  state  my  authority  for  writing  The  White 
Morning;  in  other  words  for  daring  to  believe  that 
a  revolution  conceived  and  engineered  by  women  is 
possible  in  Germany. 

Before  giving  my  own  reasons,  stripped  of  what 
glamor  of  fiction  I  have  been  able  to  surround  the 
story  with,  I  should  like  to  say  that  when  I  began 
to  put  the  idea  into  form  I  thought  it  was  entirely 
my  own.  But  while  it  is  always  pleasant  to  offer 
this  sort  of  incense  to  one's  vanity,  I  should  have 
been  more  than  glad  to  quote  to  my  editor  and 
publisher  some  reliable  male  authority;  a  man's 
opinion,  on  all  momentous  subjects,  by  force  of 
tradition,  far  outweighing  any  theory  or  guess 
that  a  woman,  no  matter  what  her  intimate  per 
sonal  experience,  may  advance. 

Imagine  then  my  delight,  when  the  story  was  half 
finished,  to  read  an  article  by  A.  Curtis  Roth,  in  the 
Saturday  Evening  Post,  in  which  he  stated  unequiv 
ocally  that  it  was  among  the  possibilities  that  the 
177 


178     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

women  of  Germany,  driven  to  desperation  by 
suffering  and  privation,  and  disillusion,  would  arise 
suddenly  and  overturn  the  dynasty.  Mr.  Roth, 
who  was  American  vice-consul  at  Plauen,  Saxony, 
until  we  entered  the  war,  has  written  some  of  the 
most  enlightening  and  brilliant  articles  that  have 
appeared  on  the  internal  conditions  of  any  of  the 
belligerent  countries  since  August,  1914.  He  re 
mained  at  his  post  until  the  last  moment  and  then 
left  Germany  a  physical  wreck  from  malnutrition. 
In  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  was  an  officer  in  the 
consular  service  of  a  neutral  country,  with  ample 
means  at  his  command,  and  standing  in  close  per 
sonal  relations  with  the  authorities,  he  could  not 
get  enough  to  eat ;  and  what  he  was  forced  to  swal 
low — lest  he  starve — completely  broke  down  his  di 
gestion. 

On  the  other  hand,  he  never  ceased  to  observe; 
and  having  made  friends  of  all  classes  of  Germans, 
and  been  given  facilities  for  observation  and  study 
of  conditions  enjoyed  by  few  Americans  in  the 
Teutonic  Empire  at  the  time,  he  noted  every  phase 
and  change,  both  subtle  and  manifest,  through 
which  these  afflicted  people  passed  during  the  first 
three  years  of  the  war.  They  are  in  far  worse 
case  now. 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     179 

Later  (in  November)  I  read  an  article  by  a  Ger 
man,  J.  Koettgen,  in  the  New  York  Chronicle,  which 
was  even  more  explicit. 

Herr  Koettgen  is  one  of  the  agents  in  this  coun 
try  of  Hermann  Fernau,  an  eminent  intellectual 
of  Germany,  who  escaped  into  Switzerland,  and 
wages  relentless  war  upon  the  dynasty  and  the  mili 
tary  caste  of  Prussia ;  which  he  holds  categorically 
responsible  for  the  world  war.  There  is  a  price  on 
Fernau 's  head.  He  dares  not  walk  abroad  without 
a  bodyguard,  and  cannon  are  concealed  among  the 
oleanders  that  surround  his  house.  Not  only  has  he 
written  two  books,  Because  I  am  a  German,  and 
The  Coming  Democracy,  which  if  circulated  in  Ger 
many  would  prick  thousands  of  dazed  despairing 
brains  into  immediate  rebellion,  but  he  is  the  head 
of  those  German  Radical  Democrats  which  have 
united  in  an  organization  called  "  Friends  of  Ger 
man  Democracy. " 

Their  avowed  object,  through  the  medium  of  a 
bi-weekly  journal,  Die  Freie  Zeitung,  and  other 
propaganda,  is  to  plant  sound  democratic  ideas  and 
ideals  in  the  minds  of  German  prisoners  in  the 
Entente  countries,  and  to  recruit  the  saner  exiles 
everywhere.  These  publications  reach  men  and 
women  of  German  blood  whose  grandfathers  fled 


180     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

from  military  tyranny  after  their  abortive  revolu 
tion  in  1848,  and,  with  their  descendants,  have  en 
joyed  freedom  and  independence  in  the  United 
States  ever  since.  The  best  of  them  are  expected 
to  exert  pressure  upon  their  friends  and  relatives 
in  Germany.  There  are  already  branches  of  this 
epochal  organization  in  the  larger  American 
cities. 

Herr  Koettgen  (who  has  written  a  book  called 
The  Hausfrau  and  Democracy,  by  the  way)  walked 
into  the  office  of  the  Chronicle  some  time  in  Novem 
ber  and  presented  a  letter  to  the  editor,  Mr. 
Fletcher.  In  the  course  of  the  heated  conversation 
that  ensued,  Herr  Koettgen  exclaimed  with  bitter 
scorn :  "Oh,  so  you  think  yourself  as  fiercely  anti- 
German  as  a  man  may  be?  Well,  let  me  tell  you 
that  you  are  not  capable  of  one-tenth  the  passionate 
hatred  I  feel  for  a  dynasty  and  a  caste  that  has 
made  me  so  ashamed  of  being  a  German  that  I 
could  eat  the  dust. ' ' 

In  Herr  Koettgen 's  article  occur  the  following 
paragraphs:  "At  the  first  glance  German  women 
hardly  appear  likely  material  for  the  coming  Revo 
lution  which  will  turn  Germany  into  a  modern 
country.  But  many  incidents  point  to  the  fact  that 
German  women  are  growing  with  their  increasing 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     181 

task.  They  are  beginning  to  replace  their  men  not 
only  economically  but  politically.  Most  of  the 
public  demonstrations  in  Germany  during  this  war 
have  been  led  and  arranged  by  women.  The  very 
first  demonstration  in  1915  consisted  of  women. 
As  Mr.  Gerard  tells  us  in  his  book,  they  had  no 
very  definite  idea  of  what  they  wanted ;  only  they 
wanted  their  men  back.  But  since  that  time  their 
political  education  has  made  rapid  progress.  .  .  . 
With  their  men  in  the  field  and  their  former  leaders 
(Rosa  Luxemburg,  Clara  Zetkin,  Louise  Zietz)  in 
prison,  German  women  are  learning  to  act  for 
themselves.  Their  demonstrations  point  to  it,  as  do 
also  letters  written  by  German  women  to  their  men 
who  are  now  prisoners  of  war  in  France  and  Eng 
land.  In  one  of  these  letters  which  escaped  the 
watchful  eye  of  the  censor,  a  German  hausfrau  de 
scribed  how  she  made  the  officials  of  Muenster  sit 
up  by  her  energetic  and  persistent  demands." 

A  girl  upon  one  occasion  said  to  Herr  Koettgen : 
"Only  women  and  children  were  employed  in  our 
factory.  We  had  more  than  one  strike.  Two 
women  would  go  round  to  every  woman  and  girl  in 
the  shop  and  tell  them :  '  We  have  asked  for  twenty 
or  thirty  pfennings  more.  To-morrow  we  are  go 
ing  on  strike.  She  who  does  not  come  out  will  have 


182     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

the  thrashing  of  her  life. '  We  were  all  frightened 
and  stayed  away,  for  they  really  meant  it." 

Herr  Koettgen  continues:  "Novel  circum 
stances  are  reawakening  in  the  meek  German  haus- 
f  rau  some  of  that  combative  spirit  which  character 
ized  the  Teuton  women  in  the  time  of  Tacitus,  when 
they  often  fought  alongside  of  their  men  in  the 
wagon  camp.  .  .  .  German  women  will  show  their 
men  the  way  to  freedom.  Doing  more  than  their 
share  of  the  nation's  work,  they  insist  upon  being 
heard,  and  their  growing  influence  is  one  of  the 
greatest  dangers  to  German  autocracy  in  its  present 
predicament.  As  politicians  German  women  have 
the  advantage  of  not  having  gone  through  the  soul- 
destroying,  brutalizing  school  of  Prussian  militar 
ism,  and  of  not  being  burdened  with  the  rigmarole  of 
theory  which  formed  the  content  of  German  poli 
tics  before  the  war.  They  can  be  trusted  to  make  a 
bee-line  for  the  real  obstacle  to  peace  and  liberty — 
to  eradicate  the  autocratic  militaristic  regime  which 
enslaved  the  German  people  in  order  to  enslave  the 
world." 

Now  that  the  way  has  been  cleared  by  two  men  of 
affairs  who  have  never  condescended  to  write  fic 
tion,  I  will  give  my  own  reasons  for  belief  in  the 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     183 

German  women,  and  also  for  the  general  plan  of 
The  White  Morning. 

I  had  an  apartment  for  seven  years  in  Munich 
and  spent  six  or  eight  months  alternately  in  that  de 
lightful  city  and  traveling  in  Europe,  passing  a 
month  or  two  in  England,  or  returning  for  an  equal 
length  of  time  to  my  own  country.  During  that 
long  residence  in  Germany  I  naturally  met  many  of 
its  inhabitants,  and  of  as  many  classes  as  possible. 
German  women  do  not  tell  you  the  history  of  their 
lives  the  first  time  you  meet  them,  not  by  any 
means ;  they  are  naturally  secretive  and  the  reverse 
of  frank.  But  they  are  human,  and  when  you  have 
won  their  confidence  they  will  tell  you  surprising 
things.  The  confidences  I  received  were  for  the 
most  part  from  girls,  and  one  and  all  assured  me 
they  never  should  marry.  Having  grown  up  under 
one  House  Tyrant,  for  whom  they  were  not  respon 
sible,  why  in  heaven's  name  should  they  deliber 
ately  annex  another  ?  Far,  far  better  bear  with  the 
one  whose  worst  at  least  they  knew  (and  who  could 
not  live  forever) ,  than  marry  some  man  who  might 
be  loathsome  as  well  as  tyrannical,  and  who,  unless 
there  happened  to  be  a  war,  might  outlive  them  ? 

The  idea  in  my  novel  of  the  four  Niebuhr  girls 


184     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

and  their  initial  rebellion  was  suggested  to  me  by 
a  family  of  Prussian  junkerdom  that  I  met  at  a 
watering  place  in  Denmark.  The  baroness  was  a 
charming  woman  who  used  a  moderate  invalidism 
in  a  smiling  imperturbable  fashion  to  insure  herself 
a  certain  immunity  from  the  demands  of  her  auto 
cratic  lord.  The  girls  were  lively,  intelligent, 
splendidly  educated.  They  were  in  love  with  soci 
ety  and  court  functions,  but  deeply  rebellious  at 
the  attitude  of  the  German  male,  and  determined 
never  to  many.  That  is  to  say  the  three  younger 
girls;  the  oldest  had  married  a  tame  puppy,  and 
anything  less  like  a  tyrant  I  never  beheld.  No 
American  husband  could  be  more  subservient.  But 
there  was  no  question  that  he  belonged  to  a  small 
exceptional  class :  while  his  wife,  with  all  the  domi 
nating  qualities  of  her  father,  was  one  of  a  rapidly 
increasing  number  of  German  women,  silently  but 
firmly  rebellious. 

The  Herr  baron  was  a  typical  Prussian  aristocrat 
and  autocrat.  The  girls  could  hardly  have  had 
less  liberty  in  a  convent.  When  they  came  from 
their  hotel  to  mine  he  escorted  them  over  and  often 
came  in.  Luckily  he  liked  me  or  I  never  should 
have  had  the  opportunity  to  know  them  as  well  as 
I  did.  Nor  should  I  have  been  able  to  continue  the 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     185 

acquaintance  after  the  day  I  wickedly  induced 
them  to  run  away  with  me  to  Copenhagen,  where 
we  shopped,  promenaded  all  the  principal  streets, 
then  took  ices  on  the  terrace  of  one  of  the  restau 
rants.  When  we  returned  he  was  storming  up  and 
down  the  platform  of  the  station,  and  he  fairly 
raved  at  the  girls.  "And  you  dared,  you  dared,  to 
go  to  Copenhagen,  without  permission,  without 
your  mother,  without  me!"  The  girls  listened 
meekly,  but  whenever  he  wheeled  laughed  behind 
his  military  back.  Then  he  turned  on  me,  but  I 
called  him  a  tyrant  and  gave  him  my  opinion  of  his 
nonsensical  attitude  generally.  As  I  was  not  his 
daughter  he  gradually  calmed  down  and  seemed 
rather  to  relish  the  tirade.  Finally  they  all  came 
over  to  my  hotel  to  tea. 

"  You  see ! "  said  one  of  the  girls  to  me  afterward. 
"I  have  not  exaggerated.  Do  you  think  I  want 
another  like  that?"  And,  so  far  as  I  know,  they 
have  never  married. 

I  did  not  draw  any  of  my  characters  on  these 
four  delightful  girls,  but  took  the  episode  as  a 
foundation  for  the  incidents  and  characters  that 
grew  under  my  hand  after  I  got  round  to  the  story. 

The  episode  of  Georg  Zottmyer  was  also  told  me 
by  a  German  girl  whom  I  got  to  know  very  well  in 


186     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

Munich,  and  who  distantly  suggested  the  character 
of  Gisela  (that  is  to  say  in  the  very  beginning. 
As  Gisela  developed  she  became  more  like  her  own 
legendary  Brunhilda).1 

This  young  woman  was  as  independent  in  her 
life  and  in  her  ideas  as  any  I  ever  met  in  England 
or  the  United  States.  But  fortune  had  been  kind 
to  her.  Her  father  died  just  after  her  education 
was  finished,  and  as  he  left  little  money,  she  went 
to  Brazil  as  governess  in  a  wealthy  family.  She 
remained  in  South  America  for  several  years,  gain 
ing,  of  course,  poise  and  experience.  Then  a  rela 
tive  died  and  left  her  a  comfortable  fortune. 
When  I  met  her  she  was  living  in  Munich  from 
choice,  like  so  many  other  Germans  who  were  bored 
with  routine  and  rigid  class  lines. 

She  was  a  beautiful  young  woman,  with  dark  hair 
and  eyes  and  a  brilliant  complexion,  and  dressed  to 
perfection,  although  she  wore  no  stays.  This  may 
have  been  a  bit  of  vanity  on  her  part,  as  the  awful 
reformkleid  was  in  vogue,  and  fat  German  women 
were  displaying  themselves  in  lumps  and  creases 
and  billows  and  sections  that  rolled  like  the  un 
trammelled  waves  of  the  sea.  Her  own  figure  was  so 

i  For  this  reason  I  asked  the  most  beautiful  woman  I 
have  ever  seen  of  the  heroic  or  goddess  type  to  be  photo 
graphed  for  the  frontispiece. — G.  A. 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     187 

firmly  molded  aud  so  erect  and  supple  that  it 
was,  for  all  her  fashionable  clothes,  quite  inde 
pendent  of  the  corset.  She  had  charming  manners 
combined  with  an  imperturbable  serenity,  and  al 
ways  seemed  faintly  amused.  On  the  other  hand, 
she  displayed  none  of  the  offensive  German  conceit 
and  arrogance. 

We  spent  several  days  together  at  Partenkirchen, 
one  of  the  most  picturesque  spots  in  the  Bavarian 
Alps,  and  as  we  were  both  good  walkers,  and  there 
was  no  one  else  in  the  hotel  who  interested  us,  we  be 
came  quite  intimate.  She  was  one  of  the  first  to  talk 
to  me  about  the  deep  discontent  and  disgust  of  the 
German  women,  and  of  her  own  utter  contempt  for 
the  meek  hausfrau  type,  and  for  the  tyrannies, 
petty,  coarse,  often  brutal,  of  the  man  in  his  home. 
Nothing,  she  was  determined,  would  ever  tempt  her 
to  marry,  and  she  could  name  many  others  who 
were  making  an  independent  life  for  themselves, 
although,  lacking  fortune,  often  in  secret.  No  mat 
ter  how  much  she  might  fancy  herself  in  love  (and 
I  imagine  that  she  had  had  her  enlightening  ex 
periences)  she  would  not  risk  a  lifelong  clash  of 
wills  with  a  man  who  might  turn  out  to  be  a  medi 
eval  despot. 

It  was  then  that  she  told  me  of  the  tentative  pro 
posal  of  one  of  her  beaux  (she  had  many)  "Georg 


188     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

Zottmyer,"  which  I  have  recorded  almost  literally 
in  the  scene  between  this  passing  character  and 
Gisela  in  the  Cafe  Luitpolt.  My  object  in  doing  so 
was  to  give  as  realistic  an  impression  as  possible  of 
what  the  German  woman  is  up  against  in  deal 
ings  with  her  male.  I  knew  Zottmyer  personally, 
and  he  interested  me  the  more  (as  one  is  interested 
in  a  bug  under  a  microscope)  because  he  had  less 
excuse  for  his  conceit  and  arrogance  than  most  Ger 
man  men :  he  was  brought  up  in  California,  where 
his  father  is  a  successful  doctor.  But  that  only 
seemed  to  have  made  him  worse.  He  returned  to 
Germany  as  soon  as  he  was  of  age,  more  German 
than  the  Germans,  and  despising  Americans. 

I  had  often  wondered  what  became  of  this  highly 
interesting  young  woman,  and  when  I  began  to 
write  The  White  Morning  she  popped  into  my 
mind.  I  believe  she  could  be  a  leader  of  some  kind 
if  she  chose.  Perhaps  she  is. 

The  cases  could  be  multiplied  indefinitely.  The 
Erkels  and  Mimi  Brandt  are  drawn,  together  with 
their  conditions,  almost  photographically.  "Helo- 
ise"  finally  married  a  Scot  and  went  with  him  to 
his  own  country,  but  her  sisters  were  dragging  out 
their  tragic  lives  when  I  left  Munich. 

A  few  days  ago  I  met  a  highly  intelligent  Ameri- 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     189 

can  woman  of  German  blood  who,  before  the  war, 
used  to  visit  her  relatives  in  Germany  every  year. 
I  told  her  that  I  had  written  this  story  and  she 
agreed  with  me  that  it  was  on  the  cards  the  women 
would  instigate  a  revolution.  "  Never, "  she  said, 
"in  any  country  have  I  known  such  discontent 
among  women,  heard  so  many  bitter  confidences. 
Their  feelings  against  their  fathers  or  husbands 
were  the  more  intense  and  violent  because  they 
dared  not  speak  out  like  English  or  American 
women. ' ' 

There  is  no  question  that  for  about  fifteen  years 
before  the  war  there  was  a  thinking,  secret,  silent, 
watchful  but  outwardly  passive  revolt  going  on 
among  the  women  of  Germany.  I  do  not  think  it 
had  then  reached  the  working  women.  It  took  the 
war  to  wake  them  up.  But  in  that  vast  class  which, 
in  spite  of  racial  industry,  had  a  certain  amount  of 
leisure,  owing  to  the  almost  total  absence  of  pov 
erty  in  the  Teutonic  Empire,  and  whose  minds  were 
educated  and  systematically  trained,  there  was  per 
sistent  reading,  meditating  upon  the  advance  of 
women  in  other  nations,  quiet  debating  unsuspected 
of  their  masters ;  and  they  were  growing  in  numbers 
and  in  an  almost  sinister  determination  every  year. 
Of  course  there  were  plenty  of  hausfraus  cowed  to 


190     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

the  door  mat,  and,  like  the  proletariat,  needing  a 
war  to  wake  them  up ;  but  there  were  several  hun 
dred  thousand  of  the  other  sort. 

Now,  all  these  women  need  is  a  leader.  The 
working  women  have  their  Rosa  Luxemburgs,  who 
think  out  loud  in  public  and  get  themselves  locked 
up;  and,  moreover,  do  not  appeal  to  the  other 
classes — for  Germany  is  the  most  snobbish  country 
in  the  world.  If  there  were — or  if  there  is — such  a 
woman  as  Gisela  Doring,  who  before  the  war  had 
acquired  a  widespread  intellectual  influence  over 
the  awakening  women  of  her  race,  and  then,  when 
they  were  approaching  the  breaking  point,  had  gone 
quietly  and  systematically  about  making  a  revolu 
tion,  there  is  no  question  in  my  mind  as  to  the  out 
come. 

Just  consider  for  a  moment  what  the  German 
women  have  suffered  during  this  war — a  war  that 
they  were  told  was  forced  upon  their  country  by 
the  aggressive  military  acts  of  Russia  and  France, 
but  which,  owing  to  Germany 's  might,  would  hardly 
last  three  months.  For  nearly  three  years  they 
have  never  known  the  sensation  of  appeased  hun 
ger,  and,  having  always  been  immense  eaters,  have 
suffered  the  tortures  of  dyspepsia  in  addition  to 
hunger.  But,  far  worse,  they  have  listened  almost 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     191 

continuously  to  the  wails  of  their  children  for  satis 
fying  food,  children  who  are  forever  hungry  and 
who  often  succumb.  Karl  Ackerman,  whose  accu 
racy  no  one  has  questioned,  states  in  his  book,  Ger 
many,  The  Next  Republic?,  that  in  1916  sixty  thou*- 
sand  children  died  of  malnutrition  in  Berlin  alone. 

These  women  have  lost  their  fathers,  husbands, 
sons — well,  that  is  the  fortune  of  any  war ;  but  they 
are  beginning  to  understand  that  they  have  lost 
them,  not  in  a  war  of  self-defense,  but  to  gratify 
the  insane  ambitions  and  greed  of  a  dynasty  and  a 
military  caste  that  are  out  of  date  in  the  twentieth 
century.  Their  parents,  when  over  sixty,  have 
died  from  the  same  cause  as  the  children.  Their 
daughters,  both  unmarried  and  newly  widowed,  are 
"officially  pregnant,"  or  the  mothers  of  brats  the 
name  of  whose  fathers  they  do  not  know.  The 
young  girls  of  Lille  hardly  have  suffered  more. 
The  German  victims  are  sent  for,  then  sent  home 
to  bear  another  child  for  Germany. 

Now,  we  know  what  the  German  men  are. 
These  women  are  the  mothers  and  wives  and  sisters 
of  the  German  men;  in  other  words,  they  are  Ger 
mans,  body,  and  bone  and  brain-cells,  capable  of 
precisely  the  same  ruthless  tactics  when  pushed  too 
hard — if  they  have  a  leader.  That,  to  my  mind,  is 


192     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

the  whole  point.  Given  that  leader,  they  would  ef 
fect  a  revolution  precisely  as  I  have  described  in 
my  story.  Nor  would  they  run  the  risk  of  failure. 
The  German  race  is  not  eight-tenths  illiterates  and 
two-tenths  intellectuals,  emotional  firebrands,  an 
archists  and  sellers-out  like  the  Russians.  They 
are  uniformly  educated,  uniformly  disciplined. 
They  will  do  nothing  futile,  nothing  without  the 
most  secret  and  methodical  preparation  of  which 
even  the  German  mind  is  capable.  It  will  be  like 
turning  over  in  bed  in  camp:  they  will  all  turn 
over  together.  They  are  damnably  efficient. 

It  may  be  said:  "But  you  may  have  spoiled 
their  chances  with  your  book.  You  not  only  have 
revealed  them  in  their  true  character  to  their  men, 
but  all  the  details  of  their  probable  methods  in 
working  up  and  precipitating  a  revolution.  You 
have,  in  other  words,  put  the  German  authorities 
on  their  guard. ' ' 

The  answer  to  this  is  that  no  German  of  the 
dominant  sex  could  be  made  to  believe  in  anything 
so  unprecedented  as  German  women  taking  the 
law  into  their  own  hands,  uniting,  and  overthrow 
ing  a  dynasty.  Nothing  can  penetrate  a  German 
official  skull  but  what  has  been  trained  into  it  from 
birth.  Unlike  the  women,  the  system  has  made 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     193 

the  men  of  the  ruling  class  into  the  sort  of  machine 
which  is  perfect  in  its  way  but  admits  of  no  mod 
ern  improvements.  That  has  been  the  secret  of 
their  strength  and  of  their  weakness,  and  will  be 
the  chief  assistance  to  the  Allies  in  bringing  about 
their  final  defeat.  I  am  positive  they  go  to  sleep 
every  night  murmuring:  "Two  and  two  make 
four.  Two  and  two  make  four." 

The  women  could  hold  meetings  under  their  very 
noses,  so  long  as  they  were  not  in  the  street,  lay 
their  plans  to  the  last  fuse,  and  apply  the  match  at 
the  preconcerted  moment  from  one  end  of  Germany 
to  the  other  unhindered,  unless  betrayed.  The 
angry  and  restless  male  socialists  would  not  have  a 
chance  with  the  alert  members  of  their  own  sex — 
who  regard  women  with  an  even  and  contemptuous 
tolerance.  Useful  but  harmless. 

I  made  Gisela  a  junker  by  birth,  because  a  rebel 
from  the  top,  with  qualities  of  leadership,  would 
make  a  deeper  impression  in  Germany  than  one  of 
the  many  avowed  extremists  of  humbler  origin. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  was  necessary  to  drop  the 
von,  and  take  a  middle-class  name,  or  she  would 
have  failed  to  win  confidence,  in  the  beginning,  as 
well  as  literary  success ;  from  opposite  reasons.  It 
is  very  difficult  for  an  aristocratic  German  of 


194     THE  WHITE  MORNING 

artistic  talents  to  obtain  a  hearing.  Practically  all 
the  intellectuals  belong  to  the  middle-class,  the 
aristocrats  being  absorbed  by  the  army  and  navy. 
The  arrogance  and  often  brutal  lack  of  considera 
tion  of  the  ruling  caste,  to  say  nothing  of  common 
politeness,  have  inspired  universal  jealousy  and 
hatred,  the  more  poignant  as  it  must  be  silent.  But 
even  the  silent  may  find  their  means  of  vengeance, 
as  the  noble  discovers  when  he  attempts  recogni 
tion  in  the  intellectual  world.  But  if  he  were  a 
propagandist,  with  the  welfare  of  all  Germany  at 
heart,  and  won  his  influence  under  an  assumed 
name,  as  Gisela  Doring  did,  the  revelation  of  his 
identity,  together  with  proof  of  dissociation  from 
his  own  class,  would  enhance  his  popularity  im 
mensely.  Moreover,  it  would  be  incense  to  the  van 
ity  of  classes  that  never  are  permitted  to  forget 
their  inferior  rank. 

In  this  country  there  is  a  snobbish  tendency  to 
exalt  and  boom  any  writer  who  is  known  to  belong 
to  one  of  the  old  and  wealthy  families;  and  the 
more  snobbish  the  writer  the  more  infectious  the 
disease.  But  then  in  this  country,  which  has  never 
suffered  from  militarism,  there  is  a  naive  tendency 
to  worship  success  in  any  form.  In  Germany  my 
heroine  would  have  doomed  herself  to  failure  if 


THE  WHITE  MORNING     195 

she  had  signed  her  work  Gisela  von  Niebuhr.  But 
her  early  education,  surroundings,  position, — to  say 
nothing  of  her  four  years  in  the  United  States — 
were  just  what  gave  her  the  requisite  advantages, 
and  preserved  her  from  many  mistakes.  She 
starts  out  with  no  prejudices  against  any  caste, 
and  an  intense  sympathy  for  all  German  women 
who  lack  even  the  compensation  of  being  hoch- 
wohlgeboren. 

No  one  knows  what  the  future  holds,  or  what  un 
expected  event  will  suddenly  end  the  war;  but  I 
should  not  have  written  The  White  Morning  if  I 
had  not  been  firmly  convinced  that  a  Gisela  might 
arise  at  any  moment  and  deliver  the  world. 

GERTRUDE  ATHERTON. 


THE   END 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


*» 


LD  21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476 


372172 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


